Dad Pham is forever saying how lucky we are to be living in Australia. He's damn right, we are. Little Sissy Pham and I visit dad once every week, and when I was a single lady with no boyfriend or cat and living 20 minutes away, it was easy peasy to spend all day with Dad and help out. I used to take him grocery shopping in the morning then spend the afternoon cooking a Phamly feast, then chill out until late.
These days, I always take him grocery shopping in the morning and do his dishes, but lunch is potato chips from Big Brother Pham's pantry or 2-minute noodles from Dad's, then Dad kicks us out between 1.30pm to have a nap. Or if he doesn't kick us out, I head home around 2.30pm to do my own chores, and cook lunch for the week, prep our dinners, and do some work emails and set up my work week. Sundays are not fun days. Basically, Dad Pham needed more support than the half day once every week we are able to give him.
The people in Dad's community recommended the Australian Government's My Aged Care support. One of their services is in-home care, which is ideal for Dad because he's nowhere near needing full-time care, but he's not doing so great on his own. He doesn't have energy to tidy up around the house and it's always a little messy. He doesn't have much appetite, doesn't cook regularly, tends to snack on junk food than have meals. General household and life chores are slipping.
My Aged Care has been a complete blessing. The government provides different tiers of funding depending on the level of care you need, which can be spent with any approved in-home care provider so we were able to select Sunnycare, a company that has Vietnamese-speaking workers. Ideal! Dad's English is also failing; he's starting to lose words in Vietnamese let alone English, his third language.
Dad's less lonely during the week as he has in-home care every couple of days, the house is generally tidier because they help clean the bathroom and kitchen, and organise his belongings - all the little things Dad has stopped doing regularly because he gets tired so quickly now. They also take Dad to the local shops when it's a cooking day to buy ingredients, which means Dad doesn't need to wait for me to come on Sundays to buy heavy grocery items he can't carry home on the bus.
Visit https://www.myagedcare.gov.au to see if they have anything suitable for you. While they do have some translators, if you can take time off work to attend the assessment with your loved one it means you'll get assessed sooner because they don't have to wait for a translator to be available. Worth the half day off I took to interpret for Dad Pham.
