Assisting Older People and People with a Disability

There are many rewarding opportunities to help and assist older people and people with a disability in almost every community across NSW. Volunteers can get involved in activities such as cooking, driving, housework and home maintenance, gardening, pet care, shopping, providing companionship and hospital visiting.

Check your local council’s website or try contacting some of the organisations listed below. To find out who your local council is, go to the NSW Government’s Local Council Search. This identifies all the local councils in NSW.

Specific Organisations

Other specific sites to contact include:

Meals on Wheels - Meals on Wheels relies on 35,000 volunteers to deliver meals throughout NSW.

Community Visitors - making friends with a resident of an aged care home or an older person living alone can be very rewarding.

Major Australian Charities - this site lists volunteer opportunities with major Australian charities across Australia by geographic location.

St Vincent de Paul - volunteers undertake a variety of roles within the Society from assisting people with a disability to find employment, to providing companionship to frail aged people.

Red Cross - volunteering opportunities with the Red Cross can range from keeping in telephone contact with aged people living alone to hospital visiting.

Northcott Disability Services and Uniting Care Burnside are organisations that help children and adults with a disability. They each have a number of offices that operate from various locations across NSW

Northside Community Forum is a resource centre for volunteers wanting to work with older people or people a disability in the Hornsby, Hunters Hill, Ku-ring-gai, Lane Cove, Manly, Mosman, North Sydney, Pittwater, Ryde, Warringah and Willoughby local government areas.

Laws for volunteering with older people in aged care homes

Operators of aged care services subsidised by the Australian Government under the Commonwealth Aged Care Act, 1997, are required to ensure staff and volunteers who have unsupervised access to care recipients undergo a national criminal history check. The check must be renewed every three years. This includes volunteers who are part of the Community Visitors Scheme and volunteers organised by the aged care provider who have unsupervised access to care recipients.

For more information go to the NSW Guide to Volunteering, chapter on compliance. It's Your Business, prepared by DADHC, is also a useful resource for non-government organisations designed to support the development of governance knowledge and board management skills.