What is Attendant Care?
Attendant care workers provide support and assistance for people living with disability to manage their essential and routine activities of daily living. When it comes to attendant care, your plan will be uniquely created for you and your goals. Attendant care can cover a wide range of supports. For some, it may simply be personal care, whilst for others, it may also involve assistance and support to make decisions, support with regulating emotions and navigating daily life, encouragement to increase independence with personal and domestic tasks, support in attending treatment/therapies and emotional support to manage challenging situations.
How can attendant care support you?
Usually, attendant care services are provided to assist people with activities including:
- Personal care such as bathing or dressing,
- Domestic tasks, such as meal preparation, and cleaning,
- Help to attend your injury-related treatment, and rehabilitation appointments or activities,
- Support with engaging in family or community activities,
- Registered nursing assistance,
- General maintenance of your home and gardening.
Requesting Attendant Care
Your need for attendant care will be assessed when you initially access the supports in your state. In NSW, the Lifetime Care scheme, based on your needs at that time. A care needs assessor (a health professional, such as an occupational therapist) will identify your support needs. They will meet with you and your family at your home to discuss your needs. They may also speak to your case manager, and any other service providers working with you to make sure they have a full picture of your support requirements.
Other states will have a similar process.
The care needs assessor will then create a report and request for the services to meet the support needs related to your injury. The type of attendant care available depends on:
- Your needs related to your injury
- Your goals for what you want to do and achieve
- Your personal and home circumstances
The characteristics of good attendant care workers and services include:
- Keeping your specific support requirements at the centre of planning and delivery of services.
- Working with you to achieve your goals to increase and/or maintain independence.
At Nextt, we are one of the largest providers of attendant care with an excellent reputation for providing complex supports for participants with Acquired Brain Injury (ABI) and Spinal Cord Injury (SCI).
Our expertise in attendant care makes sure that every person will receive the best possible service and disability support to help them live as independent as possible. We support people on an interim basis to aid recovery or on a more permanent basis in the event of long-term injury.
Nextt and Dolleina are approved attendant care providers for iCare, TAC, LifeTime Support Authority and NIISQ
across several states with experienced staff and high-quality services in all locations. If you are not currently receiving attendant care, but would like support to access this, or you are seeking to change your attendant care provider, contact Nextt today.