You tour by day and decide about the night
Aged care tours happen mid-morning or mid-afternoon. Staff everywhere, an activity running, the smell of lunch. And yet almost everything you are worried about — a fall, pain at three in the morning, a call bell nobody answers, confusion that starts after dark — happens in the hours you did not see.
This article is about those hours, and about how to find out before you sign.
What the law already guarantees
Australia is unusual here, and it works in your favour. Residential aged care homes are required to have a registered nurse on site and on duty 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and providers report their compliance. Homes also have mandatory care minutes targets — a minimum average of direct care time per resident per day, including a specified portion delivered by a registered nurse — and those figures are reported and feed the star ratings.
So you are not asking for a favour. You are asking about obligations that already exist and are already measured. Put these in writing:
- "Do you meet the 24/7 registered nurse requirement, and have you had any exemption or period of non-compliance?"
- "What are your current care minutes per resident per day, and your registered nurse minutes, against the target?"
- "How many staff are physically on the floor overnight, and for how many residents?"
The third one is the one the first two do not answer. Care minutes are a daily average across 24 hours; a home can meet its average and still run the night thin. Ask for the overnight roster numbers specifically.
The other questions that matter after dark
- What time are residents put to bed? This is the single most revealing question. If most people are in bed by 6.30pm, that is not a sleep routine — it is a thin roster organising its shift. Twelve or thirteen hours in bed produce stiffness, pressure injuries, disorientation and 4am waking.
- How long does a call bell take to answer overnight — and is it measured? A home that tracks response times knows them. A home that does not will say "straight away".
- How often are rounds done, and is the resident woken to be changed? Repositioning is necessary for someone who cannot move. Waking a person who walks and sleeps well every three hours is rostering, not care.
- How many residents are on something to help them sleep? This question probes a different one: is the night run with staff, or with medication?
- What happens if someone gets up and walks at night? The right answer involves company, light and somewhere safe to walk. The wrong answer involves bed rails and "we'd talk to the GP".
Night sedation, said plainly
If a sleeping tablet or an antipsychotic appears "to help her settle", ask in writing: "What medication, for what documented diagnosis, prescribed by whom, and where is the behaviour support plan?" A psychotropic given so that someone does not get up and does not need attention overnight is a chemical restraint — a restrictive practice under Australian aged care rules, requiring last-resort justification, informed consent from the restrictive practices substitute decision-maker, documentation and review.
It also backfires measurably: benzodiazepines and antipsychotics increase night-time falls, which is exactly what they were meant to prevent. And falls are a mandatory quarterly quality indicator, so the home is already counting them.
How to check without being an expert
- Visit a second time at about 8pm. This is the visit no home offers and the one that tells you most. Look at how many residents are still up and how many staff you see.
- Ask a care worker, not just the manager: "how many of you are on overnight on this wing?" The answer is usually immediate and precise.
- Look at turnover. Where staff churn, they churn hardest at night — and continuity is what makes someone notice at 2am that your mother "isn't herself".
- Check the star rating and the indicators alongside what you were told on the tour. The gap between the two is where you learn something.
If your parent is already there
Ask for a care plan review and have her routine written in: a bedtime that matches her habits, not the roster. If there are repeated night falls, ask for a pharmacist medication review and an environmental check — bed height, night lighting, a clear path to the bathroom, walker within reach — because most night falls happen on the way to the toilet.
If nothing moves: the provider's complaints process in writing, then the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission, which takes complaints directly and for whom 24/7 nursing and restrictive practices are core compliance matters. The Older Persons Advocacy Network is free and will help you put it in writing.
If you are still choosing
Take the three questions at the top to the first tour. They separate homes better than any brochure — and the reaction to the third, the one about the overnight roster rather than the daily average, will tell you most of what you need to know.
And if you would rather not make the calls yourself, that is the part we do. Tell us the area, your parent's care needs and your timeframe, and you get a shortlist worth calling, for A$109. If you don't receive at least 3 homes matching the area and criteria you gave us, we refund you in full. Start here
This article is general information for families, not medical or legal advice. Staffing requirements, care minutes targets and reporting rules under the aged care system change over time — confirm the current position with the provider and the regulator. Curalune does not allocate beds and does not guarantee availability.