‘Attendant care’ is the term that ACC uses to describe help from another person who performs tasks you cannot do for yourself because of your injury. These tasks include personal care, tasks of daily living and protection from further injury.
What help can I get?
You may be able to get help with:
- personal care (physical assistance to move around and to take care of basic personal needs such as bathing, feeding and toileting)
- tasks of daily living, such as communicating, knowing where you are, planning and completing tasks
- protecting you from further injury in your ordinary environment.
What do I need to do to get help?
- Talk to ACC about what kind of help we may be able to provide. See Contact ACC Claims for contact information.
- Complete the ACC001 Request for assistance form, listing details of attendant care that you require.
Note:
- You can make a verbal application for specific assistance.
- You can authorise other people, eg a family member or your doctor, to make applications for assistance on your behalf.
How am I eligible?
Your eligibility for attendant care depends on several things, including:
- the nature and extent of your injury and how much this impairs your ability to provide your own personal care
- the extent to which other household family members, or other family members, might reasonably be expected to provide your personal attendant care
- the need to avoid substantial disruption to your employment or other activities of other household family members. This may include disruption to:
- paid or unpaid employment
- structured or scheduled leisure activities that cannot be readily rescheduled or cancelled (eg team sport)
- commitments to education and educational activities (eg homework)
- religious, family or cultural activities that cannot be readily rescheduled or cancelled (eg orchestra practice)
- the rehabilitation outcome that would be achieved by providing this assistance
- whether attendant care may enable you to attend your place of work or education
- the degree to which attendant care is required, to give household family members a break from providing attendant care themselves.
All of these things will be discussed with you by your ACC client services contact or support coordinator.
The length of time attendant care can be provided to you will depend on your injury. ACC may reassess your needs from time to time.
Important:
The help you will get depends on your individual circumstances. Please contact us to confirm if you are eligible, or to identify other ways in which we can help. See Contact ACC Claims for our contact information.
If you are unhappy with the decision, you can ask for it to be reviewed. See What if I have problems with a claim?
How long might ACC take to determine if I am eligible?
ACC regards 21 days as a reasonable timeframe for the majority of decisions about what assistance you may be entitled to.
Please contact us if you have not heard from us within a reasonable period of time. See Contact ACC Claims for our contact information.
What happens next?
ACC will advise you whether your application is accepted. If your needs are straightforward, we can approve the attendant care help you need without having to do a detailed assessment.
Once ACC has approved your application you’ll need to choose who you want to provide your attendant care. You can choose from the following three options:
- an attendant care agency that has a contract with ACC (we’ll give you a list of contracted providers)
- a non-contracted agency
- a private caregiver (someone you know, such as a family member).
If you choose to use an agency:
- ACC pays agencies direct on receipt of their bill, up to an approved amount
- the agency is responsible for meeting all the legal and tax obligations of an employer
- we strongly recommend you use an ACC-contracted attendant care agency in preference to a non-contracted agency, because we check that they provide high quality, professional care.
If you choose to use a private caregiver:
- you and your caregiver both need to be aware that you may have income tax, GST and other legal obligations
- we strongly recommend that you and your caregiver get advice from an accountant or tax advisor – they can tell you about the implications of entering into a formal employment relationship (ie you are the employer and the caregiver is the employee) versus being self-employed
- you will also need to decide whether you want ACC to pay your caregiver directly or pay you directly, so that your can pay your caregiver.
Related legislation
Accident Compensation (AC) Act 2001
- Sections 81-84 Corporation’s liability to provide key aspects of social rehabilitation
- Schedule 1, Clause 14: Attendant care
Published: 20 June 2008