Every provider will tell you they are person-centred, compassionate and reliable. The words are free, and they are on every website in the country - including, in earlier drafts, ours.
These eleven questions are harder to answer with adjectives. We have included what a good answer sounds like, and we are comfortable being held to the same standard.
About who actually turns up
1. Will the same carer come every week?
Good answer: a specific arrangement, plus what happens during leave. Weak answer: "we try our best" with no detail. Consistency is the single strongest predictor of whether care works, and it is the thing families complain about most when it fails.
2. What happens when my regular carer is sick or on leave?
You want to hear that you will be told in advance, and that whoever covers is briefed. "We will send someone" is not the same thing.
3. How do you match a carer to a person?
Listen for whether they ask about language, gender preference for personal care, religious observance, dietary requirements and what the person actually enjoys - before you raise it. If matching is only discussed because you brought it up, it is not a process.
4. Can I meet or speak to the carer before the first visit?
Not every provider can arrange this, but the answer tells you how they think about the relationship.
5. What if the carer is not right?
The right answer is that you can change them, without justification, and without it being treated as a complaint.
About money
6. What are your published prices for the specific services I need?
Since 1 July 2026 every provider must publish a price list. Ask for the unit price for each service you will use, on each day type - weekday, weekday non-standard hours, Saturday, Sunday, public holiday.
7. What will my plan cost per quarter, in total?
Rates are not comparable across providers until you convert them into the total cost of your actual plan. Ask each provider for that one number.
8. What is my contribution, and who calculates it?
Contributions are calculated by Services Australia based on your income and assets, not set by the provider. A provider who is vague here is a provider who has not looked.
About the organisation
9. Who owns this business?
In aged care the answer is frequently a holding company, an investment fund or a national franchise. That is not automatically bad, but it determines whether the person in front of you can change anything.
10. Which suburbs can you actually staff, consistently?
Almost every provider claims to cover all of Sydney. Far fewer can staff every suburb reliably. A provider willing to tell you where they are not strong is telling you the truth about where they are.
11. What do you do when you cannot deliver something?
This is the question that separates operators. The honest answer involves telling you early. The answer to be wary of involves nothing going wrong, ever.
One more thing. You can raise concerns about any provider directly with the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission at any time, and you do not need your provider's agreement to do it. Any provider who implies otherwise has told you something important about themselves.
How we answer these
We match carers on language, gender preference and cultural fit before allocating anyone, and we brief them on the household before the first visit. We tell you in advance when a regular carer is unavailable. Our prices are published on this site and built into a calculator you can use without speaking to us. We are owned by two practising clinicians, not an investor group. And we will tell you when we cannot staff your suburb properly, because a referral we cannot service well is worse for us than no referral at all.
Hold us to it.
General information for families choosing an aged care provider. Current as at June 2026.