Join Our Consumer Advisory Body and Help Shape Aged Care at Catholic Homes.

We recognise that all consumers using our aged care services have unique lifetime experiences, knowledge, and skills.

We want to celebrate this by asking you to share your knowledge as a representative of our broader consumer group by joining our Consumer Advisory Body.

We hope members will feel valued, involved, respected, and challenged as they learn more about the aged care sector and how our organisation functions within it.

We also hope our members will enjoy the company and camaraderie of being part of a group of like-minded people keen to work together and create positive changes in our organisation.

We value your time and are very grateful for your participation. However, participation in the Consumer Advisory Body is voluntary, and members will not be paid for their time. If you are unwilling or unable to participate without assistance, we will support you as much as possible.

Please get in touch to discuss your needs.

The consumer advisory groups are all about you and your consumer peers. Having input into the topics discussed is essential and will help you feel more ownership of the process. We will allocate time during each meeting to discuss potential topics and issues you’d like to raise for consideration in future meetings.

Over time, we believe our consumer representatives will become more informed and engaged in what’s happening in the aged care sector more broadly, so we imagine there will be increasingly more input into setting the agenda for our meetings.

Check our Terms of Reference for more information about this group's purpose and type of topics.

We value and encourage diverse views and welcome anyone interested in joining our Consumer Advisory Body.

We will have an agenda outlining the topics we would like to discuss in each meeting. We want to hear from all participants, so fairness, respectful behaviour, and turn-taking will be highly prioritised.

We will keep the meetings purposeful and structured enough to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to speak and learn from each other’s perspectives.

If, for any reason, you are finding it difficult to participate or continue your role, please let us know how we can assist you.

We will support you in taking time away from the group if you need to or making some adjustments if you need more help staying involved.

We are excited about sharing information about our organisation and the aged care sector more broadly during our meetings, but there are other ways to learn more!

If you’d like to register to receive email updates about changes and reforms in the aged care sector, please let us know which publications we recommend.

Anyone can join.

Our Consumer Advisory Body meetings are open to Expressions of Interest from any of our consumers, though we may need to cap the total number of participants. We plan to have other ways for our consumers to contribute their valuable feedback, so we expect there will be opportunities for everyone to be involved.

We also want to involve several family members/representatives, so we have balanced views and perspectives on the issues we discuss.

We will conduct our Consumer Advisory Body in line with the expectations of the Aged Care Quality & Safety Commission.

Additionally, we will review the Terms of Reference every now and then to ensure the meetings reflect what you all agreed to initially. If not, it might be time to review the Terms or change how our meetings function, depending on the group's preference and our organisation’s expectations of the feedback we hope to receive.

To maximise your participation, we will provide information about the topics for discussion so you can consider the details and what they mean to you.

We may also send some information for pre-reading if it is available and valuable for you to have in advance.

We will not share any personal or confidential details with the group.

No, this is not a forum for grievances or complaints.

We have a process for receiving and managing complaints that will help all our consumers resolve concerns.

The purpose of our Consumer Advisory Body is to gather feedback about a range of important topics and issues that are important to our consumers and families in general, as well as topics that relate to the running of our organisation.

We expect that individual concerns will continue to be managed through our complaints processes, which will ensure that our time in the Consumer Advisory Body meetings is dedicated to discussing issues that may apply to our consumer group.

If you have outstanding issues or concerns that have not been resolved, we warmly invite you to re-commence the complaints process by contacting us for a confidential discussion.

For every consumer who attends our Consumer Advisory Body meetings, many others are not there. Please consider your role in representing yourself and acting as a representative for those who cannot be present.

We regularly check in with everyone involved in the Consumer Advisory Body meetings to ensure you are happy with the format, topics, and feedback processes. If you have any questions or feedback, we encourage you to speak to the meeting facilitator to let them know your thoughts.

Consumer Advisory groups can be advantageous and interesting, and we hope you will enjoy the opportunity.

You will undoubtedly learn much about the aged care sector reforms and know that your voice is valued and powerful in shaping our daily operations.

Hearing different perspectives and alternate views may be challenging at times. Still, they can also remind us of the diversity within our communities, which is something to embrace and celebrate.