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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Disability · NDIS registered provider 4050003922
In-home and community support
Support that comes to you, in a home that stays yours.
Help with the everyday, at home and out in your community, from workers you choose and get to know.
At a glance
In-home and community support, in short
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What it is
A support worker helps you with everyday things at home and out in your community, like showering, cooking, appointments or getting to the shops.
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Who it is for
People with a disability who have an NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme) plan, including people who live with family.
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How it works
You meet your workers first and choose who supports you. You can ask for a different worker at any time, without giving a reason.
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How to start
Call 02 9556 9500 or send us a message. We will ask what a good day looks like for you.
Your home
The front door is yours.
When support comes into your home, the worker is the guest. That sounds obvious, and it is the thing services most often get wrong: a house quietly becomes a workplace, and the person living there starts fitting in around the roster.
We train our workers the other way round. The home belongs to the person in it, and the support arranges itself around their life.
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You decide who comes through the door
You meet a worker before they start, and you can say no.
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Your routine, not our roster
Support is built around the day you actually want to have.
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Your home stays your home
Workers follow your house rules: where things live, shoes on or off, whether the telly goes on, what they may and may not use.
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Your keys, your entry
How a worker gets in is your decision, and it is written down and agreed with you.
What we help with
The everyday, and getting out into the day.
Support is built from your NDIS plan and what you want your week to look like. Most people we support use some mix of the following.
Getting out is part of it, not an extra. The Good in the Hood barbecue at Rozelle is one of the places our in-home support ends up, because someone wanted to be there and the support was built to make that happen.
- Personal care, including showering, dressing and grooming
- Meals: planning, shopping, and cooking together rather than for you
- Keeping the house the way you like it
- Support to take medication
- Getting to appointments, and being alongside you in them if you want that
- Getting out: work, study, sport, a class, your place of worship, the shops, the pub
- Building the skills to do more of it yourself over time
- Giving a family carer a genuine break
A community-centred model
Home is the beginning, not the whole of it.
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.
Social Care Future
The seven Keys to Citizenship
- Purpose
- Money
- Freedom
- Help
- Home
- Love
- Life
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Support that points outwards
Hours spent at home are not the measure of good in-home support.
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Your connections, not our activities
We are not trying to recruit you into a group we run.
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Ordinary places, at ordinary times
The shops on a Saturday, a class on a weeknight, the same café on the same morning.
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Real wealth, not just funded hours
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.
Your workers
What to expect from a support worker.
This is what we train for, and what you are entitled to hold us to.
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They knock, and they wait
Arriving at someone’s home is not the same as arriving at work.
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They do things with you, not to you
Wherever you want to be part of a task, you are part of it.
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They keep what they see to themselves
Workers see your home, your family, your health and your bad days.
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They write down what matters, and you can read it
Notes are about your support, not opinions about you or your household.
Getting started
How support usually begins.
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Tell us about your day
Not a list of tasks, but what a good day looks like and where it currently comes unstuck. That is what a useful roster is built from.
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We match, and you meet
We put forward workers we think will suit, and you meet them before anything starts. You have the final say on who supports you.
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We start small
A short trial period, then we sit down and change whatever is not working. Most arrangements need adjusting in the first month, and that is normal.
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We keep checking
We ask you how it is going, not just whether the shifts were filled. If you would rather tell someone other than your regular worker, we will arrange that.
Aisling Scully
Complex Care Lead - AASW Social Worker, Registered Behaviour Support Practitioner
Aisling and her team take the first call, and will either get you started or pass you to the right person.
Read more
Read more about support at home and in the community
Guide
What is private stays private
What the UN Convention, the NDIS Code of Conduct and the Practice Standards say about privacy, dignity and family life when support happens at home.
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.
We would be glad to hear from you.
Whether you are sorting out support for yourself, for someone you care for, or for a participant you coordinate, we would be pleased to talk it through.
Prefer Easy Read? Here is our Easy Read library. Need Auslan or an interpreter? Tell us and we will arrange it.
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