Consumer Directed Care

Consumer Directed Care Overview Some of you may have heard your clients or the media referring to the term, “Consumer Directed Care”. Below, we give you an overview of Consumer Directed Care or CDC as it is often referred to.

As part of the Living Longer Living Better aged care reforms, the Australian Government is significantly expanding home care to assist people to remain living at home for as long as possible, and to introduce more choice and flexibility for people receiving care at home through Consumer Directed Care. Consumer-Directed Care is the name given to an approach in which service users are in charge of determining which services they access. Person-directed approaches are rapidly becoming the primary way in which services are delivered and HomeCare Australia are committed to real choice and autonomy for those who want it. What is Consumer-Directed Care?

The essence of consumer-directed care is simple. It gives the person receiving services, or their primary carer (generally a husband or wife or perhaps an adult child), varying degrees of autonomy over a funded package of care. That means that the person or their carer makes decisions about how and where to best spend the funds that are available. This not only gives the person the right to make important decisions over their life, it also means that the person with the most knowledge about their goals and aims, decides how to reach those. Consumer-directed care also has the advantage that where appropriate, more funding can be made available to the person because they are less dependent on the support of case management and care coordination staff.

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