Care finder is a free service that provides specialist and intensive assistance to help vulnerable older people to find and connect with aged care and community services. It has been designed for people who have ‘fallen through the gaps’ and have no family or friends to help them connect with My Aged Care and other community supports.
Care finders can assist with:
- talking to My Aged Care on their behalf and arranging an assessment
- attending and providing support at the assessment
- finding and short-listing aged care providers in their area
- completing forms and understanding aged care service agreements
- checking-in once services are up and running to make sure everything is going well and as expected
- solving other challenges and connecting to supports in the community, including health, mental health, housing and homelessness, drug and alcohol services and community groups.
Referral criteria
To receive care finder support, a person must:
- have no carer or support person who can help them or;
- not have a carer or support person they feel comfortable or trust to support them; and
- be eligible for government-funded aged care.
In addition, they should have one or more of these reasons for needing support:
- have difficulty communicating because of language or literacy problems;
- find it difficult to understand information or make decisions;
- reluctance to engage with aged care or government funded services;
- remain in an unsafe situation if they do not receive the services they need.
Care finder is available for people 65 years or older (50 years or older for Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people). If they are on a low income, homeless or at risk of being homeless, clients can be 50 years or older (45 years or older for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people).
There are four care finder providers in western Victoria: CatholicCare Victoria; Housing for the Aged Action Group; Wintringham; and genU.