Daily, I speak with primary carers supporting much-loved older people — husbands, wives, adult children, and friends. Many juggle paid work, their own health challenges, family life, and other commitments. Their tenacity to keep going in such trying circumstances is nothing short of extraordinary. As a former primary carer, their pain resonates deeply.
Sadly, things have not improved; they have become worse.
Australia relies on nearly 3 million unpaid carers, providing roughly 2.2 billion hours of informal care each year. If the government had to pay for these hours, the cost would be astronomical.
Carer burnout and emotional distress is real and quietly reaching crisis.
This crisis is driven by the immense difficulty of accessing government-funded aged care before a family collapses.
Accessing the system is like climbing a rugged mountain. Both require careful preparation, immense endurance, and navigation through a thick fog.
The system moves at a glacial pace, and the primary carer acts as the shock absorber for a bureaucratic process. Carers do not wait for funding in a vacuum. They wait while lifting a loved one, managing deteriorating health, skipping their own medical appointments, and losing sleep.
By the time funding finally arrives, the carer is often standing on the precipice of physical and emotional exhaustion. We are asking families to climb Everest without a safety rope, then wondering why they burn out before the summit.
Carer burnout doesn’t happen because a carer lacks love, patience, or willpower. It happens because they are carrying a heavy load up an unforgiving incline, entirely in the dark.
When a loved one’s health declines, a carer takes on a dizzying array of new roles overnight: coordinator, medical advocate, scheduler, and physical supporter. Preserving their loved one’s dignity comes at the expense of their own mental and physical wellbeing.
But it isn’t just the daily tasks that drain the battery; it’s the arduously long journey and the systemic fog.
Once an assessment team approves your climb, you do not instantly reach the peak. Instead, you enter the national Support at Home priority queue.
You are stuck at a high-altitude camp, trapped by unpredictable weather, waiting for a package to be assigned.
This wait is now, on average, 347 days from initial application to approval. During this limbo, a senior’s health frequently declines, forcing already-exhausted carers to hold the line while waiting for the government to unlock the gates.
When funding finally arrives, a new fog rolls in. The path forward splits into a dizzying maze of acronyms, fee structures, and rigid rules. It feels like navigating a cliff edge without a map.
No rational person attempts Everest without a Sherpa, yet many try to navigate aged care entirely alone, pushing themselves to the brink of collapse.
Surviving the climb requires a guide.
Independent, trusted aged care navigators know the terrain and the hidden pitfalls. They advocate for you before you are too emotionally spent to fight the system.
Reaching the summit is not about conquering the mountain; it is about securing peace.
When the right formal care is finally in place, the relief is palpable. The older person receives the professional care needed and, crucially, the primary carer can finally take off the heavy pack.
It allows them to step back from being a stressed, burnt-out case manager, returning to what matters most: simply being a husband, wife, child, or lifelong friend again.
This article by Julia McCarthy appeared in the June 2026 edition of Village Voice.