Guide
The front door is yours
When support comes to your home, the worker is the guest. What that means for who comes in, your routine, your house and your keys.
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In-home and community support · Guide
Home is the beginning, not the whole of it
Why good in-home support points outwards, the idea of real wealth, and what a community-centred model looks like in the Inner West.
Hours spent at home are not the measure of good in-home support. A better one is whether your week contains anyone you are not paying to be there. In-home and community support exists to help you live in the place you call home, and then to help you get out of it, to the things and the people you already care about. Here is what that looks like when we do it well.
What we are aiming at
Social Care Future, a movement of people who use social care in the United Kingdom, describe what they are aiming at like this:
We all want to live in the place we call home, with the people and things that we love, in communities where we look out for one another, doing the things that matter to us.
That is a British sentence about a British system, and the ambition in it travels to the Inner West without much translation. Two of the changes they call for, living in the place we call home and leading the lives we want to live, are exactly what in-home support is for.
Pippa Murray and Simon Duffy use the phrase real wealth for what it actually takes to build a good life: your relationships, your own capacities, and the opportunities a community offers. Funded support is one input among those, not the whole picture.
Your connections, not our activities
We are not trying to recruit you into a group we run. We are trying to help you get to the things you already care about, and to stay in them once you are there. That might be:
- A class on a weeknight
- A shift at work
- The shops on a Saturday, on your own terms
- The same café on the same morning, until the person behind the counter knows your order
Belonging tends to be built out of repetition in ordinary places, at ordinary times. A support worker's job is to make the repetition possible, and then, gradually, to be needed less for it.
How this shows up in your plan
Community participation is part of in-home and community support, not an extra you add on. When we plan with you, we ask about the week you actually want to have, not the tasks that need doing. Support is then built around that day: if Thursday is when you see your sister, Thursday stays yours.
We will also be honest about consistency. The same worker coming each time is most of what makes this work, and we will tell you how much of that we can hold for your roster before you commit.
If you would like support that points outwards, not just inwards, talk to us. Call 02 9556 9500 or get in touch.
Last reviewed 20 September 2026 by Steven Lowrie, Governance and Case Management Lead. Rules and funding can change. If something here does not match your situation, ask us.
Talk to us about In-home and community support
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