Helensvale · Gold Coast
Personal care
Personal care is the most personal support there is. Help with showering, dressing, hygiene and getting your day started, delivered the way you want it, by someone you’ve had a say in choosing.
What's included
It isn’t a fixed package. You might need help with one thing or several, every day or twice a week. Household tasks and meals are covered on our daily living page.
Help with washing, oral care, shaving and grooming, at whatever level of help you actually want.
Getting up, getting dressed and getting out the door, without the day starting badly.
Prompts and support with medication you manage yourself, and help keeping to health routines.
Discreet, respectful help on your schedule rather than ours, with your privacy protected.
How it should feel
There’s a difference between being helped and being handled, and anyone who has needed personal care knows it immediately.
Being handled is being moved through a routine while someone talks over your head. Being helped is being asked first, every time. It’s doing the parts you can do yourself, at your own pace, even when that takes longer. It’s the door closed, the towel where you want it, and nobody hurrying you.
Good personal care should leave you feeling more like yourself, not less. That means the worker follows your routine rather than importing their own, and asks before doing rather than assuming.
If that sounds like a low bar, it should be. It’s still the thing people tell us made the difference.
Your say
Being involved in choosing your worker isn’t a favour we’re doing you. For personal care it’s written into the standards we’re audited against. There’s more on how we screen and match on our support workers page.
Tell us and we'll work to it. For personal care this is one of the most common requests we get.
How your household works, what's expected, and being understood without explaining yourself twice.
Personal care works better when you aren't starting from scratch with someone new each week.
Timing
Mornings are the busiest, but support doesn’t have to sit in a neat weekday slot. Tell us what your week actually looks like and we’ll tell you what’s possible.
Funding
Personal care sits in your Core budget, under assistance with daily life. It’s usually the most flexible part of a plan.
That flexibility matters here. Core funding can generally be moved between everyday supports, so if you need more help with personal care and less with something else, there’s often room to adjust without going back to the NDIA.
What it costs per hour depends on when it happens. Evenings, nights and weekends are priced higher than weekday daytime, and that’s set by the NDIS Pricing Arrangements rather than by us. We’ll explain what applies to you before support starts.
If your plan is a newer one, your funding may also be released in instalments across the year rather than all at once, which affects what’s available in any given period.
A common mix-up
People often search for home care when what they mean is NDIS personal care. They’re two different systems and it’s worth getting right early.
Home care is aged care language. Home Care Packages and the Support at Home programme are for people aged 65 and over, or 50 and over for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and they’re accessed through My Aged Care.
The NDIS is for people under 65 with permanent and significant disability. If you’re already an NDIS participant when you turn 65, you can stay on the scheme. If you first need support after 65, aged care is usually the pathway.
We’re an NDIS provider, so the NDIS is what we can help with. If aged care turns out to be your pathway, My Aged Care is the place to start, and it’s worth sorting that out early rather than late.
Before you decide
Worth asking whoever you’re considering, us included. Personal care isn’t a support to settle on quickly.
For personal care the answer should be yes, and it shouldn't sound like a special favour.
Ask what happens when they're on leave, and whether you'll meet the replacement first.
Registration matters more here than for most supports, and it's checkable in about two minutes.
You're about to let someone help you shower. Meeting them beforehand is a reasonable ask.
Ask how you say that, who hears it, and how long it actually takes to change.
Ask whether it's someone who already knows you, or whoever happens to be free that morning.
Our standards
Personal care is one of the supports the NDIS treats as higher risk. That means the checks on us are heavier than they are for a lot of providers.
We’re on the certification pathway, so our registration is assessed through a two stage audit that includes a site visit and interviews with staff and participants, not just a document review. There’s a further audit part way through as well, rather than only at renewal.
One condition attached to our registration is specific to personal care. Where a participant chooses to be supported by a single worker, we’re required to carry out a risk assessment. It’s published on our listing on the NDIS Provider Register, alongside our registration status and the supports we hold.
If what you need happens to fall outside what we’re registered for, we’ll tell you early and point you somewhere useful.
Getting started
Most people are surprised how little is involved in the first step. We support participants right across the Gold Coast, and it starts with a conversation rather than paperwork.
You tell us what help you need and when. Nothing to fill in before we've even spoken.
Your routine, your preferences, the gender you're comfortable with, and who's available near you.
An introduction before anything begins, so the first shower isn't the first time you've met.
FAQs
Yes, and for personal care it’s specifically covered by the standards registered providers are audited against. Reasonable efforts have to be made to involve you in choosing your workers, including preferred gender for personal care supports. Just tell us.
High intensity personal care covers complex health related tasks like tube feeding, tracheostomy care, ventilation and complex bowel care. It’s a separate registration group with extra standards. We’re registered for everyday personal care, not high intensity.
Yes. Mornings are the most common request, but evenings, overnight support and weekends are all possible. Pricing differs outside weekday daytime hours, which is set by the NDIS Pricing Arrangements, and we’ll explain what applies before you start.
That depends on your plan rather than on us. Personal care comes from your Core budget, which is usually the most flexible part, so there’s often room to adjust between everyday supports without going back to the NDIA.
No. Home Care Packages and Support at Home are aged care, for people aged 65 and over. The NDIS is for people under 65 with permanent and significant disability. Different systems and different applications. We’re an NDIS provider.
You don’t have to, but most people want to and we work to it. Personal care is easier when you aren’t explaining your routine to someone new. If your regular worker is away, we’ll try to send someone who already knows you.
Tell us and we’ll change it. You don’t need a reason and you don’t need to soften it first. With personal care especially, feeling comfortable isn’t a nice extra, it’s the whole thing.
Here to help
Tell us what help you’re after and when, and we’ll be straight about whether we can do it. We support participants across the Gold Coast, and if we’re not the right fit we’ll say so.
Support coordinator? Send a referral and we’ll be in touch.
Loving Hearts Care Group is a registered NDIS provider, ABN 99 674 548 862, registered for assistance with daily personal activities. Our registration is listed as Approved on the NDIS Provider Register and is in force until 27 March 2029.
