When Your Usual Carer Is Unavailable: A Backup Care Information Checklist

What if the usual carer is sick or unavailable now?

If someone is in immediate danger or there is a medical emergency, call 000. See Carer Gateway's emergency contacts for emergency and accessible contact options. Do not wait for a care-team message to be read.

If a paid support worker cannot attend, contact the provider using its agreed cancellation, replacement or after-hours process. Explain the support that is missing and when it is needed. Ask what it can confirm, who will update you and what to do if it cannot provide a suitable replacement. A proposed worker or unanswered message is not a confirmed arrangement.

If an unpaid carer becomes sick or injured and cannot continue caring, Carer Gateway's emergency respite service can help explore replacement care. Call 1800 422 737 at any time for emergency respite. Arrangements depend on a suitable service being available locally; a place or worker is not guaranteed. General Carer Gateway enquiries are Monday to Friday, 8 am to 5 pm.

Use any existing professional care or emergency instructions and tell the relevant service about the actual gap. If someone has offered to help, check they can safely provide the particular support. Do not assume a relative can take over a trained worker's duties or that someone can be left without support they need.

Once the immediate situation is being handled through the appropriate service, record what has actually been agreed. Who is arriving or calling, when, what will they do, and who will check that the arrangement has started? Keep anything unresolved visible so the next person does not mistake a proposal for a booking.

Prepare around the participant's preferences and actual needs

Begin with a calm conversation at a time when nobody is rushing. Ask the participant who they would feel comfortable receiving help from, how they want a change explained and what matters most if their normal routine changes. Use their preferred communication method and chosen support to take part.

Then work through an ordinary day. Identify the help that is already provided, which parts are time-sensitive and which require a qualified or trained person. The purpose is to understand the arrangements that need confirming. Clinical decisions, medication instructions and specialist care requirements belong with the appropriate professional.

Use the official Carer Gateway emergency care plan and cards as the starting point for emergency care information. The Kinovo tools below help track agreements, missing information and follow-ups alongside that plan; they do not replace it.

Keep those jobs separate. Having excellent information does not mean a worker has been booked. Someone agreeing to make a phone call does not mean they have agreed to provide overnight support. Naming the exact responsibility makes it easier for people to say what they can realistically offer.

Ask people before putting them down as a backup

A useful request is specific: 'Could you collect the keys and meet the confirmed worker on Tuesday evening if I am delayed?' It is easier to answer than 'Can you be our emergency contact?' A person may be comfortable with one small job and unable to provide personal care or stay overnight.

Ask each proposed contact about availability, travel, limits and how they want to be reached. For a provider, also clarify booking requirements, the support it can deliver, relevant staff competence and any costs or service conditions. An agreed preparation conversation is not necessarily a future guaranteed service.

Use clear statuses: not asked, awaiting reply, agreed or unavailable. Record the date and the limits of an agreement. Reconfirm when the arrangement is needed; people's health, work and availability can change. If a key contact does not answer, use the next agreed contact or process rather than repeatedly sending messages to one person.

If nobody suitable is available, record the gap and discuss it with the relevant provider, Carer Gateway or your my NDIS contact. For a gap that affects NDIS supports, explain what has changed and ask what process applies. Do not wait until a planned absence to start that conversation.

Make current information easy to find and understand

Think about the first practical questions a temporary supporter would have. How does the participant prefer to communicate? Which appointment is actually going ahead? Where are the relevant current instructions? Who can answer a question about them? A short information index can point to these answers without reproducing a whole record.

Keep clinical instructions in their original current form, with their author and date visible. Ask the relevant clinician, pharmacist or provider to clarify anything incomplete or conflicting. Do not rewrite dosage, transfer, swallowing or other specialist instructions from memory into a general checklist.

Decide what each person needs and has permission to receive. The NDIA's guide to sharing your plan with a provider explains its own consent process. A family relationship or app invitation does not, by itself, give someone authority to access every record or make decisions for the participant.

Agree an appropriate offline option as well as any digital one. Keep printed information in a suitable place, tell the agreed people where it is and replace outdated copies. Avoid writing passwords or access codes into a broadly shared sheet. Use a private, agreed way to arrange access where needed.

If files are scattered, use the NDIS document organisation checklist to identify the current version, the person who maintains it and the people who need access.

Send a clear request while there is time to prepare

Use this message for a planned discussion with a proposed contact or service. Replace the bracketed prompts, keep the request within that person's role and share only the information needed to answer it. If support is urgently missing, use the direct contact steps above instead of waiting for email.

After a reply, write the actual agreement in the contact card. If the reply says 'possibly' or asks for more information, keep it pending. Give the follow-up to someone who has agreed to do it, with a date to check back.

Worked example: preparing for a carer's day procedure

Fictional example: Daniel lives with his partner, Erin, who provides some unpaid support. Erin has a planned day procedure. Daniel wants to keep his usual morning routine and would prefer his regular provider to support him while Erin is away. His sister, Jo, offers to help with transport.

They separate the jobs. Jo agrees to collect Erin after the procedure; she has not agreed to provide Daniel's morning support. The provider is asked about that support and confirms the booking, timing and relevant worker arrangements. Daniel helps decide what information is shared and how he wants the temporary change explained.

Erin and Daniel review the current information together. The provider confirms which instructions it already holds. A question about one document goes back to the responsible professional rather than being guessed. They put the emergency care plan and the appropriate offline information where the agreed people can find them.

They also record that an unexpectedly late return would leave an evening gap. That stays marked as unresolved until they have spoken with suitable contacts and confirmed an arrangement. The checklist's value is making that gap visible early; it does not turn Jo's transport offer into an assumption that she can cover everything.

Check the arrangement before you need to use it

A short walkthrough can reveal problems that a completed form misses. Ask an agreed supporter to find the contact details and relevant information, and explain who they would call about an unclear instruction. Check that they can open the digital copy or locate the printed one. Finding information is not a substitute for any training or professional assessment the care requires.

• Choose someone to confirm contact details and availability, with that person's agreement.
• Ask each service or professional to keep the information within their responsibility current.
• Review after a change in care needs, medication instructions, address, provider or a contact's availability.
• Record a next review date that suits the situation, and replace outdated copies in the places people actually use.
• After an absence, ask the participant what worked and what should change before the next one.

If preparing the plan exposes a care arrangement that cannot be sustained, that deserves a conversation in its own right. Tell the relevant service what help is no longer available and when. Do not keep an unrealistic arrangement marked as confirmed simply because it is difficult to find an alternative.

Use Kinovo to keep preparation shared and current

Kinovo can help the invited care team organise the preparation: current important information, relevant documents and agreed tasks such as 'confirm the provider's after-hours contact' or 'check that the offline copy has been replaced'. Give each task to someone who has accepted it and keep access appropriate to their role.

Start with one unresolved preparation item. Add the relevant current information with appropriate visibility, invite the person who can help and agree a check-in. The family does not need to maintain every item alone; the people responsible for documents and arrangements can contribute their own updates.

Kinovo does not book emergency respite, find or roster replacement workers, monitor safety or guarantee that a message will be read. Keep the official emergency care plan, appropriate offline information and direct contact arrangements available separately. Use the app to prepare and coordinate, and the agreed services to respond when help is needed.

See how to organise your care team in Kinovo

For a paid worker joining an already arranged service, see what to give a new support worker in week one. That information handover sits alongside the provider's own induction and care responsibilities.