Who pays for in-home monitoring: NDIS, Support at Home, or you.

Families almost always arrive at this in the same order. First, will it actually help? Then, about a minute later, and who pays for it? The second question deserves as plain an answer as the first, so here it is, including the parts that are not in our favour.

There are three routes. Two of them are government programs with an assessment in front of them, and one of them is simply buying the thing. Which route applies to your parent is not ours to decide, and you should be wary of anyone who tells you otherwise before an assessment has happened.

The three routes, in plain terms

• NDIS assistive technology. For eligible participants, an in-home sensor can sit under assistive technology funding.
• Support at Home. The program that replaced Home Care Packages, arranged through My Aged Care after an assessment.
• Private. Simple to arrange if funding doesn’t apply. You own the equipment outright, and there is no monthly fee.

In every case, what we can help with is the same: explaining exactly what the system does, working out how many rooms a particular home needs, and putting a real quote in writing that a planner, an occupational therapist or a plan manager can act on.

NDIS assistive technology

For eligible participants, this can be funded as assistive technology under the NDIS, and that funding can cover the device, the install and ongoing monitoring. It is worth asking for all three rather than just the hardware, because an unfitted sensor in a box helps nobody, and the ongoing part is what keeps it working after the first month.

One thing to say up front, because it changes who you ask and in what order: Alien IT Solutions is not an NDIS-registered provider. What we do is help families check eligibility and prepare quotes, and work through the detail with your plan manager or occupational therapist. Whether an unregistered provider can be used at all depends on how a particular plan is managed, and your planner, local area coordinator or plan manager can answer that in one sentence. Ask them before you count on it, not after.

Support at Home

Support at Home is the program that replaced Home Care Packages. If your parent already had a package, or was waiting on one, this is the name to use now when you ring. An assessment comes first, and My Aged Care is the Australian Government’s entry point for arranging one.

As with the NDIS, where it applies the funding can cover the device, the install and the ongoing monitoring rather than the box alone. We’re glad to help you and whoever is coordinating the supports work out what fits.

If no funding applies

Plenty of families never touch a program, and that is a perfectly ordinary outcome rather than a failure. Buying privately is simple, you own the equipment outright, and there is no subscription. What it costs depends on the home and on how many rooms you’d like covered, so we give you a real price rather than a guess, after a short conversation about the house.

What to have ready before you ask

Whichever route you’re on, the same handful of details makes the conversation go quickly:

• Which rooms matter. Usually the bathroom, the bedroom and the lounge, in that order.
• Who should be told. Alerts go only to the phones you nominate, and it’s worth knowing who is on that list before you ask for a quote.
• How the plan is managed. Self-managed, plan-managed or agency-managed for the NDIS, or the name of the provider coordinating Support at Home.
• Who the professional is. The occupational therapist, planner or care partner whose recommendation carries weight.
• What the worry actually is. A fall on the bathroom floor is a different case to a day that quietly drifts, and the assessment tends to follow the specific worry rather than the general one.

What we can and can’t do

Being blunt about the line is more useful than being encouraging about it.

• We can explain what the sensor does and doesn’t do, quote the device, the install and the ongoing monitoring, put that in writing for a planner or OT, and talk it through with your plan manager.
• We can’t decide eligibility, act as an NDIS-registered provider, or promise that a program will fund it. Nobody selling you a sensor can.

Where this comes from

The primary sources behind the above, so you can check any of it yourself rather than take our word for it:

• My Aged Care, the Australian Government’s entry point for aged care assessment and services.
• My Aged Care: Support at Home, the official program page for how that funding is arranged.
• Department of Health, Disability and Ageing: Support at Home, the department’s own page on the program that replaced Home Care Packages.
• NDIS, the scheme’s own site, which is the authority on eligibility, plan management and assistive technology rules.

For what the sensor actually does before you ask anyone to fund it, see how it works, and for the privacy question that usually comes next, what a monitoring device shares, and who can see it.