Most people find us on the worst week of the year.
Someone has had a fall. Or come home from hospital and can’t manage the stairs any more. Or a daughter has visited for the first time in two months and noticed her mother is holding the furniture to get down the hallway.
We are a mobile allied health team. We come to the house. We have been doing it across Melbourne since 2011 and there are fifty of us now.
We visit clients in their own home in the following suburbs. If your parent’s suburb is not on the list, call us anyway. We go past these suburbs, usually another ten kilometres or so.
Bayside and inner south
Armadale 3143, Brighton 3186, Brighton East 3187, Elsternwick 3185, Gardenvale 3185, Hampton 3188, Kooyong 3144, Malvern 3144, Prahran 3181, South Yarra 3141, St Kilda 3182, Toorak 3142, Windsor 3181
South east
Bentleigh 3204, Carnegie 3163, Carrum Downs 3201, Chadstone 3148, Chelsea 3196, Cranbourne 3977, Dandenong 3175, Frankston 3199, Glen Huntly 3163, Mulgrave 3170, Murrumbeena 3163, Ormond 3204, Parkdale 3195, Rowville 3178
North
Brunswick 3056, Kew 3101
West
Ascot Vale 3032, Braybrook 3019, Maribyrnong 3032, Sunshine 3020, Tullamarine 3043
We also visit residential aged care homes, retirement villages and independent living units in all of the above.
Physiotherapy. Occupational therapy. Exercise physiology. Speech pathology. Podiatry and massage therapy are both coming.
Not every family needs all of it, and it often starts with one and becomes two.
Plenty of families begin with an occupational therapist and then realise how much the physiotherapy matters for keeping her safe, so they add it. Just as often it runs the other way: the physiotherapist notices the house itself is the hazard and suggests an OT assessment for modifications or equipment.
When that happens you keep the same phone number and the same person coordinating it. You do not start again.
Our admin team books the visit and takes the details then, including anything the therapist needs to know about getting in. You get a text confirming the date and time.
Each visit runs about an hour.
The first twenty minutes is talking. How many falls, stumbles or near misses in the last twelve months, what your mother was doing each time, what time of day, and whether she got herself up off the floor or waited. A near miss counts, because the next one may not be. What she has stopped doing that she used to do. What she is finding hard right now, in her own words.
Then we measure things, because a feeling is not a baseline. Timed Up and Go. Thirty second sit to stand. Four stage balance test. Walking speed over four metres. Grip strength. We document what we find, so there is a baseline to measure against.
We look at what she actually wears on her feet around the house, which is usually not the pair she shows visitors.
After the visit we send you a written plan and a home exercise program built around what she can tolerate. Seated or standing exercises, near a benchtop or a chair for support, ideally five to ten minutes a few times a week. For someone who cannot follow a list, it might be two movements done with whoever is already there, printed with photographs. A program that does not get done, or does not get done safely, is worse than no program.
The OT walks through the house with her. The front step and the path to the letterbox. Hallway lighting and where the switches are. Rugs and cords. The bathroom, which is where most of it happens: is there a rail, is the shower over a bath, how does she get in, how does she get out, how does she get up off the toilet. The bed, and how high it sits. The kitchen, and what she is reaching above her head for. And the path from her bed to the toilet at two in the morning in the dark, which is the single most dangerous trip in most houses.
The same therapist comes back. Not a different one each time.
We re-test as we go, and the outcome measures go into the monthly progress report, so improvement is a number and not an opinion. If your mother’s sit to stand goes from eight to thirteen, you will see that written down. If it goes backwards, you will see that too, and we will tell you why.
The report goes out to the care team involved.
Support at Home. This is the current government program, and it replaced Home Care Packages. If your parent has a package, allied health sits in it and we work with the Home Care Package and Support at Home providers who manage it. Ask their provider to contact us, or we can contact them directly.
Commonwealth Home Support Program. Smaller amounts of entry level help before a full package.
Private. No referral needed, no waiting for an assessment, start this week.
TAC. If a car accident caused it.
If you are not sure which of these your parent is on, ring us and say so. We work it out with you. It is the most common question we get and nobody has ever been embarrassed about it.
We ring back within thirty minutes on business days. Not “shortly”. Thirty minutes.
We have been doing this since 2011 and our Google rating is 4.9 from over 200 reviews.
We run Function First, our own program in residential aged care homes, which means if your parent does eventually move into care we often already work in the building.
And there are fifty of us, so if your regular physiotherapist is sick or on leave, someone else comes. Small operators cannot do that and it is the thing families notice most.
Most first visits happen within five business days. We will give you a real date on the phone rather than “we’ll be in touch”.
Every therapist who comes to the house holds a current police check and NDIS worker screening clearance. And you get the same therapist each visit, so it is not a different stranger at the door every fortnight.
Call her GP and call us, in either order. The GP checks for a medical cause, things like blood pressure, medication, infection, eyesight. We assess the strength, the balance and the house. You do not need to wait for one before starting the other, and you do not need a referral to book us privately.
We come to the house. That is the whole business. It has been since 2011.
Most first visits happen within five business days. We will give you a real date on the phone, and we contact you within thirty minutes on business days.
Every therapist who comes to the house holds a current police check and NDIS worker screening clearance. You get the same therapist each visit rather than a different face each fortnight, and you get a text confirming the date and time, so your mother knows who is coming and when.
Very common, and it is usually not stubbornness, it is that accepting a physio feels like admitting something. It often works better if the first visit is framed as getting stronger rather than being assessed, and if you are there for it. Tell us that when you book and the therapist will handle it that way.
Yes. You get the monthly progress report with the outcome measures in it. You can also call us any time for an update.
No. Not for a private appointment and not for a Support at Home or CHSP package. You can ring us today.
That is the occupational therapist. They measure, write the recommendation, and it goes to her package or to you to arrange. We tell you what it costs before anything is ordered.
Yes, and independent living units, and residential aged care facilities.
Call 1800 847 847 or fill in the enquiry form and we will call you back within thirty minutes on a business day.
Tell us the suburb, tell us what happened, and we will tell you what we would do first.
