My own operation is finally booked and there is no cover for the fortnight afterwards. How do people pay for that?

#1ron-at-home(Joined Aug 2025 · 17 posts)August 10, 2026, 4:22 pm

I have put this off twice already and I am not putting it off again, so it is booked for October. Six weeks of not lifting anything, which in this house means six weeks of not doing about half of what I do in a day.

He needs help getting up, help washing, and somebody in the house overnight. I cannot do any of that with a fresh repair, and I am not going to try, having read what happens to people who do.

So the question is money and mechanics. Two weeks minimum of somebody else doing it, possibly six of somebody doing part of it. Who pays for that, and how far in advance does it have to be asked for? I am in Australia. Happy to hear how it works elsewhere because I suspect the shape is the same everywhere and only the names change.

#2tomsdaughter(Joined Jan 2025 · 31 posts)August 10, 2026, 6:03 pm

Start now, not in September. Whatever the answer turns out to be, the lead time is the thing that catches people out.

#3Maura KinsellaAdmin(Joined Sep 2024 · 168 posts)August 11, 2026, 10:15 am

Tom's daughter is right and I would go further: the assessment is the slow part, and everything else hangs off it.

The mechanism is the same in every system on this site, which is worth knowing before you ring anybody. An assessment produces an entitlement, the assessment is usually triggered by someone asking, and planned cover is treated as a completely different animal from a crisis. That last point is the one that helps you here, because you have a date. A carer with a surgical date in October is the easiest case a planner will see all week, and it is far more likely to be arranged well if it goes in as planned respite in August than as an emergency in the second week of October.

For where you are, the two doors are the one for him and the one for you. My Aged Care is the entry point for the assessment of the person being cared for and for the type and level of government funded care. Carer Gateway is your side of it, and it explicitly covers carer needs assessment and support planning, tailored support packages including planned respite, and emergency respite. Ring both, say the date out loud, and use the words planned respite for a carer's surgery, because that is a category rather than a description.

The same two doors exist elsewhere with different names. In England and Wales it is a request to adult social services for a carer's assessment under section 10 of the Care Act 2014, alongside a review of his own care and support, and the fact that you will be unable to care for a defined period is exactly the material the assessment exists to consider. In the United States there is no equivalent assessment right, and the route is the Area Agency on Aging under the National Family Caregiver Support Program, which funds respite, plus whatever his own cover allows, and it is worth knowing early that Medicare home health does not pay for round the clock care or for personal care alone. In Ireland the request goes to the local health service, and the annual Carer's Support Grant is often what people use to buy some of the cover privately. In Canada it is provincial and varies.

Two practical things. Ask what the charging position is at the same time as you ask for the assessment, because in several systems the cover is assessed as a service to him and charged on his means rather than yours, and carers often discover that at the wrong end. And whatever is agreed, get the start date, the number of hours and the name of whoever agreed it in writing before your operation, because you will not be in a state to chase anything in the week afterwards.

Respite care explained covers the forms respite takes and how it is funded in each system, the carer's assessment is the request itself, and if something happens to you is the version of this for the emergency you do not get to book.

#4K. McAllister(Joined Nov 2025 · 11 posts)August 12, 2026, 2:47 pm

American here, and the sentence about Medicare is the one I wish I had understood a year earlier.

I assumed that when I had my knee done there would be some coverage for someone to help my mother, because there is coverage for so much else. There is not, unless she needs skilled care, and she does not, she needs someone to be there. I paid for it, out of savings, and it was more than the surgery cost me.

The Area Agency on Aging did come through with some respite hours eventually, and I want to be fair about that, but it was a fraction of what I needed and it arrived after the fortnight I needed it in.

#5dee1972(Joined Apr 2025 · 24 posts)August 14, 2026, 8:31 am

The other half of this that nobody has mentioned is him.

Mine reacted very badly to the idea of a stranger doing the washing, and the money turned out to be the easy part. What worked in the end, and only just, was two visits a week for a month beforehand doing the shopping and the tea, so that by the time it mattered she was not a stranger.

Six weeks is a long time to be told you are being handed over to somebody new on day one.

#6ron-at-home(Joined Aug 2025 · 17 posts)August 30, 2026, 5:58 pm

Rang both. Carer Gateway have booked an assessment, the twenty second of September, which is three weeks before the operation and later than I would like but is a date. My Aged Care want to reassess him, which I had not anticipated and which apparently has its own queue.

Dee's point has landed harder than the money one, if I am honest. I had been thinking about this as a rota problem. He heard me on the phone saying the word respite and did not speak to me for the rest of the evening.

So: no answer yet on who pays for what, and a conversation at home I have not worked out how to have. I will come back when I know more.