Under the Support at Home program, every client is paired with a dedicated Care Partner team. Your Support at Home Care Partner is your main point of contact, your advocate, your guide to services and funding, and the person who keeps checking in to make sure your care is still working for you.
But if you're familiar with the old Home Care Package system, your Care Partner won't be quite what you expect. The role is different from a traditional case manager, and the difference is worth knowing about.
This guide explains what your Care Partner team does, how they work with your family, and how to get the most from every conversation with them.
What your Care Partner team helps with
Your Care Partner is the person who connects all the moving parts of your care. They're there to help with:
- Your care plan and the goals behind it
- Your Support at Home budget and how your funding is being used
- Coordinating service providers and workers so the right things happen at the right time
- Connecting you to allied health, social programs, respite and other community supports
- Monthly check-ins to make sure your care still fits your life
- Advocating for you when something needs to shift, like a provider, an assessment or a funding review
Your Care Partner is not a service worker themselves. They don't do personal care or cleaning. They're the person making sure everything else runs well around you.
Things worth bringing up at your monthly check-in
The monthly check-in is a conversation, not a form. Bring up anything that affects your care, including things that feel small. A few examples:
- A new health diagnosis, medication or hospital visit
- A change in your home or household (a partner moving into aged care, a grandchild moving in)
- Worries about fees, contributions or rising living costs
- A new goal, like travelling, a hobby, or spending more time with family
- Concerns about a specific service worker or provider
- Caregiver strain, if a family member is supporting you regularly
- Feeling more isolated than before, or noticing you're getting out less
- A question about the AT-HM scheme or home modifications
- Something a friend or neighbour mentioned about their care that sounded useful
If it affects how you live at home, it's fair game for the conversation.
How your Care Partner team works with your family
Family involvement in aged care looks different for everyone. Some older Australians prefer to manage their own care. Others want a son, daughter or partner in every conversation. Many sit somewhere in between.
Your Care Partner team adapts to what you want.
If you've nominated a registered supporter, usually a family member or close friend who helps you make decisions, they can be part of conversations, receive copies of your care plan, and help with practical tasks like booking appointments or speaking with Services Australia on your behalf.
Even without a formal registered supporter, your Care Partner can still involve family members in ways that make sense to you. That might look like:
- Including a daughter on the phone when reviewing your care plan
- Looping your partner in when services need to change
- Coordinating around a family member who already provides regular support
- Arranging respite for a family carer who needs a break
Your Care Partner never acts outside your wishes. If you want a family member involved, they'll make it happen. If you'd rather keep some things private, they respect that too.
For many families, having a Care Partner in the picture is a real relief. There's someone keeping track. Someone who knows the system. Someone who flags an issue early, instead of everyone finding out during a crisis.
How are they different from a traditional case manager?
If you or a loved one had a Home Care Package before November 2025, you would have had a case manager or care coordinator. The names varied by provider, but the role was broadly similar: someone who coordinated your services and reviewed your care plan every so often.
A Care Partner looks similar on paper but works differently in practice. A few key shifts:
- Regular contact, not just when needed. A traditional aged care case manager might have checked in every few months, or only when you raised something. Under Support at Home, your Care Partner is required to have direct contact with you at least once a month. The goal is to stay ahead of issues, not react to them.
- Doing with, not for. The old model often looked like, "I'll arrange that for you." The Care Partner model is closer to, "Let's work out what's best together." You're a partner in your care, not a recipient of it.
- Goals-led, not just task-led. Care plans now focus on what you're trying to achieve and maintain (staying mobile, keeping your garden going, cooking for yourself) rather than just a list of services. Your Care Partner is trained to think about wellness and reablement, not just service delivery.
- Built-in advocacy. Under the new Aged Care Act 2024, older people have formal rights. Your Care Partner's job includes making sure you know those rights and can exercise them.
None of this means the old system was wrong, or that every case manager wasn't excellent at what they did. The point is that home care management has shifted. Support at Home is structurally designed around a more proactive, personalised, partnership-based relationship.
Want to talk to a Care Partner team member?
If you're already a Catholic Healthcare Home Care client, your Care Partner's direct contact details are in your care plan and welcome pack. They're the first person to call whenever something changes, or when you want to review your services.
If you're thinking about Catholic Healthcare as your Support at Home provider, our Care Partner team can talk you through what joining looks like, what to expect in your first few months, and how we'd work with you from day one. We can also help if you're considering switching providers.
Call us on 1800 225 474 or get in touch online to have a chat with a Care Partner team member about your situation.
About Catholic Healthcare
Catholic Healthcare is a leading not-for-profit provider of residential care, home care and retirement living services across New South Wales and South East Queensland. For more than 30 years, we have supported older people of all faiths, backgrounds and cultures to live with dignity, purpose and connection. Guided by our purpose to create a world where older people thrive, we deliver personalised, relationship-centred care that nurtures the body, mind and spirit. Today, Catholic Healthcare supports more than 10,000 residents and older Australians through residential care homes, retirement living communities, and home and community services.
To learn more about our initiatives, programs, and services, follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter.