Study finds missing link in HCP services

Including handyman services as part of the home care package program could help older women stay at home longer.

Older woman could be helped to live at home for longer if small ‘handyman’ tasks were included in the suite of services offered under home care package program, a researcher says.

Marissa Dickins

New research from Bolton Clarke, recently published in the journal Ageing and Society, investigated the factors preventing women from accessing the support that could help them remain independent.

The Melbourne-based study, the first of its kind, is part of the Older Women Living Alone project.

More thirty per cent of Australian women live alone, yet their experience of growing older is poorly researched, says Bolton Clarke research fellow and Monash University adjunct lecturer Marissa Dickins.

“There are specific issues that face older women … that are less apparent for older men,” she told Community Care Review.

Her study surveyed 37 women aged 55 and over from across Melbourne between May and August in 2017.

It concludes that barriers and enablers to assessing service, as well as their intersections with gender and living situations, need to be considered in service design and re-design.

Financial challenges

Financial challenges resulting from lack of super and retirement savings, lack of information, and difficulties navigating a complex and largely digitised system were among the main barriers to emerge from the research.

We usually think about the big things, like cleaning and nutrition and gardening, but finding a way to plug the gaps for small services will be a way to assist women to have confidence they can stay at home for longer.

Dr Marissa Dickins

But it also found that the failure of the current home care system to provide simple tasks is also acting as a barrier to independence.

Dr Dickins said it was often the small things that led to respondents’ concerns about their ability to live at home, even if they were managing all the other aspects of living at home well.

“It’s definitely one of the gaps that we identified,” Dr Dickins said.

“A  lot of the women said ‘I just need someone to come over and change that light bulb that’s blown, I need someone to come in and help me bring down the drapes so I can clean them, I need someone to change the battery in the fire alarm when it goes flat’.

“We usually think about the big things, like cleaning and nutrition and gardening, but finding a way to plug the gaps for small services will be a way to assist women to have confidence they can stay at home for longer.

“One of the suggestions that came out of our co-design was to have a handyman type person who could come in do all these little jobs.”

Women in the survey also spoke about a lack of knowledge being a major barrier to accessing services, Dr Dickins said.

“There was a lot of feeling by older women that they didn’t know what they didn’t know, and they didn’t necessarily know where to go to figure out what they didn’t know,” she said.

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Tags: bolton-clarke, featured, home-care, home-care-packages, marissa-dickins, monash-university,

4 thoughts on “Study finds missing link in HCP services

  1. Surely this is dependant on the way the Case Manager of the HCP allocates the funds? Working in the industry, I am aware of women who have the services mentioned in this article.

    1. Absolutely correct Carmel. Providers seem to be a law unto themselves . Change provider if you are not getting what you need or you are paying too much in fees

  2. The Home Care Packages Operational Manual Section 9.2.2 Support Services clearly states “Home maintenance, reasonably required to maintain the home and garden in a condition of functional safety and provide an adequate level of security” as being part of the services an HCP Client can access. With this in mind I don’t understand where the researchers at Bolton Clark came to the conclusion minor home maintenance wasn’t part of a Home Care Package CDC led service delivery. Its there in black and white. This is a very common service provided by many HCP Providers, they should revisit their research.

  3. I don’t know why this is here. I live in a rural area , have a home care package and can get basic maintenance done using those funds. I self manage, it is much much better than provider managed. There are Self managed pages on FAcebook where we share information and support each other. Some providers have unnecessary ridged rules, with self management we have more options. Don’t accept a poor service from your provider even if you don’t want to self manage you can easily change to a better provider even if you live in a rural area. Look up Self Managed Home Care Packages For Consumers Only on Face book if you are interested in self managing

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