Best Aged Care / Disability Support Services in Victoria Melbourne and Geelong

I enjoy living at Shalom retirement village as it is in a quiet area of Rockhampton surrounded by beautiful gardens, walkways and a delightful lagoon… Read more

at the back of the village. I regularly walk around the grounds and pathways near the lagoon and watch the multitude of birdlife within a safe environment. People are friendly and because it is a small village, it is easy to gather and enjoy social occasions in the community hall.

Stay away from these scammers. Absolutely freaking useless. They owe my mother $10K but refuse to do anything. Extremely high staff turnover and staff are poorly trained and probably not paid well. They have wasted so much of my time.

Omg my mother is in a Bupa aged care home and I am constantly raising concerns I hope that I’m heard because it will be the last time I communicate… Read more

with the home. I will go externally if I need to I gave two stars in the hope they improve on their care practices and staff attitudes

I couldn’t be happier with my in-home assist bed and chair! The bed is super comfy and supportive, making it so much easier to rest and get a good… Read more

night’s sleep. The people who installed my bed took so much care seldomly found when buying anything these days. All I know is that I should of done this years ago. Thanks for making my days that much better :)

Isizah Godspower – These are the worst people I have come across in my entire life. They invited me for an interview, told me I passed the interview, collected my visa,… Read more

passport, tax file number, bank detail, and all the information private to me. After 2 weeks, I did not hear anything from them. I called, and nobody answered. I emailed them, and they said they were auditing. This happened last year, and until today, I have never heard from them. Why collect my personal and private information if you are not ready for employment.

Biggest crooks in rockhampton booked up over $13 000 worth of work for clients not one complaint refusing to pay will be reporting a fraud complaint to Queensland Police and my gov aged care

I would like to thank the home care and clinical nurses who attended to my treatment and recovery this year. All the nurses had a pleasant demeanor… Read more

and were very patient and helpful. They went out of their way to assist me during the difficult weeks and months. Their empathy, knowledge and guidance helped me to recover much better and faster than what was expected. I would like to offer my deepest gratitude to all the hard-working nurses at Silverchain, God bless you all for the fantastic job that you are doing to help not only individuals but entire families.

You won’t find a better Home Care Package Provider. Professional, transparent, reliable, communication is amazing and best of all locally owned and operated by compassionate people who genuinely care!

Great Service – I was given a great service by Home Care Heros. They were very efficient in finding me heros immediately after I notified them of my special needs. The heros are in my local area and at a reasonable hourly rate.

The SIL team at my mother’s residence transitioned to Nurse Next Door with what initially appeared to be strong promise. The organisation presented… Read more

as experienced and assured us of high standards of care, including oversight from registered nurses. Unfortunately, our experience since the transition has been consistently disappointing.

There has been an extremely high turnover of staff across all levels, including support workers, registered nurses, team leaders, and senior management. This lack of continuity makes it very difficult to maintain accountability or ensure consistent standards of care.

We have experienced several serious issues, including a critical medication error where my mother was administered another resident’s full Webster pack for the evening (approximately 10 medications). This resulted in her being hospitalised for several days while doctors worked to stabilise her condition. This incident alone raises significant concerns regarding medication management and supervision.

Additional concerns include staff sleeping during active overnight shifts, inadequate training for SIL staff caring for high-needs residents, and a culture where responsibility appears to be placed on frontline staff rather than addressed at a management level. Essential equipment has also been allowed to go uncharged, preventing safe transfers for multiple residents.

From a day-to-day care perspective, there have been ongoing issues with basic household management, including failure to maintain adequate groceries and improper food rotation, resulting in spoiled items being left unused. My mother relies on 24/7 care and they have left her in the past waiting to go to bed till 10:30pm, dinner late when shes hungry, left waiting to go to the toilet etc.

Overall, the service has required an unreasonable level of oversight from family members, which is particularly challenging when not living on-site. Based on our experience, the level of care and professionalism has not been close to meeting our expectations, and I would strongly encourage others to carefully consider their options.

Very toxic workplace. The frontline staff are treated like cr#p by other staff. Unless you are in the click you don't matter.

Appalling lack of care and compassion. Bad communication and continuity of staff making service impossible. Excuses don’t cut it. I feel very sorry for those in a worse situation than me.

As a job seeker applying for a position at Cleo's Place, one of the questions i was asked at the interview was "Have you in the past ever taken an employer to fair work". Being asked that question is a red flag for me.

I'm not able to get through to my co-care partner. They do not respond to emails They make mistakes in their accounting when they are literally… Read more

taking money out of your bank account!! There doesn't seem to be any sort of complaints processs. I have had to lodge a complaint with the quality and safety commission and have had absolutely no response from Plancare.

I finally today told them I was leaving - via email (As there is literally no point ringing). I've had enough of their total unprofessional inconsiderate handling of their clients

I phoned Care About to express my dissatisfaction with the My Aged Care provider they recommended. The owner of the provider was rude and unpleasant… Read more

when I raised concerns about the 10% administrative fee on every service and the hourly rate increase from $79.50 to $116 they were intending to charge my fund. Consequently, I contacted Care About to request a change of provider, and they assured me that a consultant would call the next day at 10 am. However, I am still waiting for that call. In the meantime, I found a new provider on the My Aged Care website. What does Care About really care about?

Terrible for people who are high-needs residents. McKenzie owned the Buderim Views facility before Bolton Clarke, and it was no better. Our loved… Read more

one had to go into care after suffering a stroke, leaving them paralysed on one side of their body. They have been abused verbally, and on a couple of occasions, physically picked up off the floor, when they had rolled themselves off the bed due to discomfort from not being moved or adjusted, and thrown back on the bed. Investigations failed to find out who did it, despite the fact that by law they should know who is working where and when. Both care providers have never had people who seem to know how to treat people with permanent disabilities, and polite requests and demonstrations are received and ignored. Our loved one is subjected to pain every time they roll or hoist them during care. As our loved one says: "I'm just treated like a side of beef. At present, they employ many staff whose English language level is too low, resulting in difficulties for English speaking staff and residents, and for the poor people themselves. It is not good or fair for anyone. Interactions suggest that many of them don't have enough English to do a Cert III in Individual Support (Aging). I witnessed a Native Speaker employee ask a food service worker to "wait there one minute, please, I'll bring the food trolley out now". The worker walked off. Obviously didn't understand the word "Wait", let alone the rest of the sentence. (Hardly high-level English!) I could write another full page of examples of communication problems. It is so dangerous for all concerned, including the staff with English language difficulties.

Yesterday, while on the phone to a family member, whom our loved one had rung because they couldn't get anyone to move them from the lounge where they had been dumped, back to their room so they could at least watch what they wanted to watch on TV, our family member heard a carer (presumably) say loudly and rudely, "WHAT?" (as in "What now? / What do you want?). Then they turned and walked away without responding. Other so called "carers" have told our loved one that "Your family have left you here to die", "Can't you do anything for yourself! I could put in many more nasty comments. Talk about a total lack of empathy, sympathy, or common human decency.

Many of the staff blame a half paralysed person for everything: losing lower dentures, falling out of bed, requesting pad changes or repositioning. Don't get me wrong, there are, and have been some lovely people working there, but it appears that a larger percentage are not fit to be in the industry. We know from several years of dealing with this, that some of these people pretend when residents' family are there, but show their true colours when they think they are unobserved. As mentioned above, we have heard some distressing exchanges when the 'lack of care' person doesn't realise the phone can pick up every word they say. I just read another review about Buderim Views having allowed "a cult" member being employed by Bolton Clarke just recently. I think we encountered them at a meeting with the then Manager, and the Clinical Care Manager - must have been one or the other of them. The Manager has since been replaced. My partner ended up walking out of the meeting because they were telling us that our loved one had been waving their paralysed arm (no movement since the stroke) around due to the fact that they had been praying with them. Very DISTURBING! Proved that many of the staff have no medically based knowledge/common sense/intelligence, and/or take little to no notice of doctors/hospitals. So, after several years, constant advocacy on our loved one's behalf, we have NO confidence in the Aged Care System, the providers they allow to advertise, take in, mistreat and neglect high-care needs residents. Advocacy directly with the providers achieves NOTHING. We wish we could euthanize our loved one, as they repeatedly request. I have had to help a few residents in the same position as our loved one - when I have heard them crying out "Nurse, nurse, someone", and no-one has come within 15-20 minutes. Often the call bell is not put where it can be reached, and then the person is blamed for falling out of their bed or chair when trying to reach it. Same with providing them with drinks, or TV remotes, or their phones. Hygiene is abysmal for these people, long term UTI problems, constipation being left until hospitalisation is necessary, because these people are just too much trouble. Oue loved one will probably die of sepsis because the hospital said they could see repeated bouts (true) and now the bowel leaks into the stomach area. HOWEVER, aged care providers get more money for high-needs residents. It just doesn't get spent on caring for THEM. The place might be ok if you are mobile, but not for high needs patients, and goodness only knows what happens in the dementia wing. Our loved one has also had dementia patients wander into their room and take their blanket, and we suspect other things as well. Nothing negative can ever be proven, of course. We just want to cry every time we go in, and more so after we've visited. Apparently, this is common across many facilities, which is why you hesitate to move people, apart from distance. Either the management don't care about the residents, or they are totally ignorant of what their staff get up to. It appears many of the staff need retraining, further training, some need English language assistance, and some of the others are just plain, nasty, individuals who should not be allowed to work with vulnerable people. I am hesitating to even post this review, in case, as has happened in the past, the staff members who shouldn't be working with vulnerable people take it out on the resident. Despite the privacy issues for our loved one, we wish we had cameras in the room - at least we could have identified the non-humans who have NO COMPASSION. We ALL need to advocate for our loved ones, and all the other people in the same or similar positions. There are too many incidents of bad behaviours, neglect and abuse 'falling through the cracks' in our systems. I just want to add that our sincere, heartfelt thanks go to the great staff who do try to do their best for the people they care for. It must be distressing for those great staff members to know they have a few colleagues in their midst who don't have the right attitudes and character to be around vulnerable people. The 'bad' people leave a taint on the 'good'. This relates to the elderly, disabled or children. How many stories of abuse, neglect and sexual misconduct do we all hear? We all know these things have always happened, but we seem to be in a period where too many people have lost their 'humanity', and despite all the Royal Commissions and the establishment of 'watchdog' entities, we now hear about it on an almost daily basis. Our health, education, childcare, aged care and disability care systems all seem to have become too big and driven by profit and are now ineffective and expensive without improving. I don't have the answer, but it seems that our politicians don't either. People's faith in these systems appears, rightly, to be at an all-time low. Financial profit creates a triangle between the providers, the workers and the residents/care recipients that only benefits 'the business'. We are told that we live in a country with one of the highest standards of living in the world, but we also know that we have massive problems with homelessness, providing healthcare, social welfare, etc., and that leaves many of us wondering where the revenue from our high levels of taxation is being spent.

They just don’t care – I had a bereavement recently and could not attend my appointment. Instead of then giving me 2 week’s reprieve I had to repeat myself before I received a week’s reprieve. Heartless money grabbing behaviour.