Financial Support for Family Carers

Recommendations

The core role of family carers be recognised as providing emotional and associative care, which cannot be easily replaced by formal services.
The best way to support family carers is to complement their core role by ensuring there are comprehensive care services for clients at home, through increasing the quality and quantity of formal care services.
As recommended in our report Improving the Quality of Work for Women in the Homecare, Residential and Cleaning Sectors, improving the quality of the formal services provided in the home requires the precariousness of employment to be addressed.
That care plans and packages be based on the level of client need, not on assumptions of the availability of family care.
That clients and family carers, in consultation with funders, can opt for some aspects of care packages to be undertaken, for pay, by family carers.