Home providers

Helping Seniors Live Independently: Become a Home Provider

If you like helping others, value connection, kindness, and reciprocity, and need a little help around your home, home share may be a life-changing option for you. Shared Lives specialises in matching seniors with a carefully vetted and trustworthy home sharer.

A personal approach to home share

Before we find a home share match, we take the time to learn about your lifestyle, interests, preferences and experiences. We then work with you to set goals for what you would like to achieve within the Shared Lives program. Family members and/or a trusted guardian are very welcome to be part of this process.

This discussion includes the types of support that you might need from the 10 hours available each week. For example:

Setting up video calls with family and friends
Gardening
Vacuuming
Cleaning the bathroom
Walking the dog
Accompanying you to an appointment or outing
Meal preparation

A Shared Lives home provider looks on as their home sharer vacuums

A Shared Lives home sharer helps their home provider with gardening

The types of support can be modified weekly, depending on your needs and your home sharer’s schedule. This is easily managed via the Shared Lives app.

Shared Lives home share does not include personal assistance, so the support from your home sharer may complement other services that you already have in place.

If needed, we can introduce you to trusted organisations that do provide personal services.

Coupled with the 10 hours of support per week, you and your family can feel reassured that someone is staying overnight with you at home.

Visit the families and guardians page to learn how home share benefits families, or contact us.

Why we focus on home share for seniors

Shared Lives is a specialised home share program and our commitment is to helping seniors live joyfully, independently and safely. Unlike other home share schemes in Australia, we have chosen to focus on seniors’ home share for our program. This is because we know first-hand the kind of enriched living experiences that both home sharers and older home providers can enjoy through home share arrangements. By focusing on this one area of need, we can tailor our program to helping seniors maintain the lifestyles they enjoy. Learn more about our story on About Us or read our FAQs.

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Safety

Home sharers undergo a thorough vetting process, including background checks, to ensure that they adhere to and uphold our very high standards.

They must be able to demonstrate that they live the Shared Lives values of connectedness, kindness and reciprocity. From this pool of carefully vetted applicants, we select a shortlist of potential, compatible companions for you.

Quality standards

All of the Shared Lives home share agreements comply with the Aged Care Quality Standards guidelines. Although this is not required of us, we have adopted this additional level of governance for your, and your family’s, peace of mind.

Our regular support visits and calls are conducted by aged care professionals who adhere to this framework. All our interactions are logged and noted on our Shared Lives app. These extra standards help us ensure that our home share is well-suited to a senior persons’ needs.

Support

Shared Lives is here to support you and your family or guardian every step of the way on your home share journey. We pride ourselves on delivering case management as part of our service, with the goal of helping seniors remain happily and safely in their home.

Available by phone 24-hours a day, 7 days a week.
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Fortnightly face-to-face meetings with you.
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Check-in phone calls in between visits.
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Shared Lives app enables all parties to work together, provides visibility and sets expectations.
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Introductions to trusted and carefully vetted providers.

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Helping seniors connect with services, activities and events in their local council area

Fees

Shared Lives is a fee paying service committed to providing premium support to home providers and their families or guardians. Fees cover:

Learning about your goals, interests and preferences.
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Matching you with a carefully vetted home sharer.
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Setting up the home share agreement.
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Scheduled check-ins.
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24 hour, 7-day a week support as required.
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Other forms of case management, eg, linking you to services and community.
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Access to the Shared Lives app.