Home Independence program

Information for care recipients can be found here.

Download a printable version of the Home Independence Program brochure here.

The effectiveness of this program has been demonstrated by an evaluation here.

Is your patient finding things a bit tricky around the home?

Consider our Home Independence (HHIP) program, or HACC Home-based Independence Packages.

Suitability

The HHIP program is for people living in the community with a chronic condition or functional disability who want to regain independence in their home and daily life. The program targets clients requesting or requiring additional services as a result of deteriorating health.

Patients are suitable for referral if:

• Home Support Programme (Cwlth or State) eligible (includes carers)
• living at home and are experiencing difficulty in performing everyday tasks,
• motivated to motivated to work with health professionals to regain their independence
• they experience low to moderate functional needs (Dementia and high-care needs should be referred to other services)
• they have not had recent surgery requiring rehabilitation intervention

Purpose of this program

The HHIP program is an intensive reablement service. As a specialist service, HHIP provides a targeted intervention from a multi-disciplinary team of health professionals (including nursing, exercise physiology and occupational therapy), seeking to maximise preventative and restorative care in order to optimise outcomes for care recipients and avoid their unnecessary progression to higher-level, more costly services.

A recent evaluation of the program demonstrated that HHIP is a strategic service that effectively improves health outcomes while reducing service usage overall: See HHIP Evaluation.

The program offers

Our team of multi-disciplinary health professionals provide:

• A home occupational health and safety assessment
• A comprehensive patient health assessment to assist clients to set goals to achieve independence
• Showing your patient ways to make daily tasks easier, including household chores and personal care tasks
• Physical Activity plans and programs to improve your patient’s strength, balance and mobility to remain independent in their home and active in their community
• Home assistance from Support Workers for a period of up to 12 weeks
• Providing education on community services and social activities

How this service works

• Referrals are accepted statewide from GPs, hospital discharge planners, community service providers, family members, carer or friend, or self-referral
• On receipt of a referral, a Care Assess program coordinator (RN or OT) will arrange a home visit to assess your patient’s health status and home care needs
• Together, your patient and our coordinator will plan the clients’ program
• If appropriate, an exercise physiologist will make a time to see your patient to assess their activity levels and discuss a program designed to enhance their independence
• Following the assessment our coordinator will coordinate and contract services to direct-care service providers who can best meet your patient’s needs

Funding and fees

• This program is supported by funding from the Australian Government under the Commonwealth Home Support Programme (Cwlth or State) for people aged 65 years or older (50 or older if Aboriginal), and by the Tasmanian State Government for people under the age of 65 years (under 50 if Aboriginal).
• Clients with the capacity to pay will be required to make a contribution to the cost of care by way of a co-payment per hour of in-home service:

- Pensioner from $5.00 per visit, to an upper limit of $10.00 per week

– Non-pensioner from $20.00 per visit, to an upper limit of $30.00 per week

• However we will assess your capacity to pay and no client will be denied a service they need based on an inability to pay fees. Our Fee Policy is available upon request.

Information for care recipients can be found here.

Download a printable version of the Home Independence Program brochure here.

Disclaimer: Although funding for this program has been provided by the Tasmanian and Australian governments, the material contained herein does not necessarily represent the views or policies of the Tasmanian and Australian governments.