"Take me home": what you can actually do when your parent wants to leave aged care

The sentence every family hears

Two or three weeks after the move, the same words at every visit: "Take me home." You drive back feeling like you did something unforgivable, and nobody at the home has told you what you are actually allowed to do.

Start with what rarely gets said plainly: an aged care home is not a locked facility. Nobody is detained there. Your parent entered under an agreement, and their rights are set out in the Statement of Rights that every approved provider must uphold — including the right to be treated with dignity, to have their identity and choices respected, and to exercise control over their own life. A provider that behaves as though admission transferred the decision to the family has the relationship the wrong way around.

First question: does your parent have decision-making capacity?

This is not a yes-or-no question, and it is where most families go wrong. Someone can be lost on the date, tell you the same story three times, and no longer manage a bank account — and still hold a clear, stable view about where they want to live. The reverse also happens: a person can hold a tidy conversation for a minute and have no grasp of what living alone would actually mean.

Capacity is decision-specific and it fluctuates. Ask a precise question rather than a general one: "Has capacity been formally assessed for this particular decision, by whom, and on what date?" "She's confused" is a description, not an assessment. And watch the two things that most often make an older person look permanently impaired when they are not: an untreated urinary tract infection, and a medication started at admission.

Clear up a common misunderstanding too. An enduring power of attorney or enduring guardianship generally only operates once the person can no longer decide for themselves — it does not let you overrule a parent who still has capacity. The only thing that transfers that decision against someone's wishes is an order from your state or territory's guardianship tribunal (NCAT, VCAT, QCAT and their equivalents), which is a hearing, with notice, where your parent is heard.

If your parent has capacity: they can go

Nobody can hold them. So the useful question stops being "are they allowed?" and becomes "to where, and with what around them?"

Before anything moves, get three things in writing:

• The refund of the accommodation deposit. If your parent paid a refundable accommodation deposit, the balance must be refunded within a legislated timeframe after they leave, and interest is payable on it. Ask for the date the refund period starts, the exact balance after any agreed deductions, and the interest rate being applied. This is money families routinely leave on the table because they never asked for the calculation in writing.
• Notice and fees. How much notice is required to leave, and what is charged for the days after the room is vacated. Read the agreement rather than accepting a figure over the phone.
• What happens to the place. If the return home fails in three weeks, does your parent come back to this home, or back to the start? Their aged care assessment approval does not vanish, but the room does — and re-entry means finding a vacancy again.

Then ask the question that really decides it: what made home impossible? If it was the nights, the falls, the meals or the medications, going back with none of that changed ends at the same point in six weeks. Very often the right answer to "I want to leave" is not home. It is a different home. It is not aged care being rejected — it is this place.

If capacity is genuinely impaired: ask about restrictive practices

A secure dementia unit can be entirely appropriate. But keeping a specific person from leaving is a restrictive practice, and in Australian aged care those are tightly regulated: they must be a last resort, used only after alternatives have been tried and documented, applied for the shortest time possible, set out in a behaviour support plan, and consented to by the person or their restrictive practices substitute decision-maker. Environmental restraint — a coded door, a secured perimeter — counts.

Ask the facility manager in writing:

• Which restrictive practices apply to my parent, since when, and what is the documented clinical justification for her specifically?
• Is there a current behaviour support plan, when was it last reviewed, and may I have a copy?
• Who gave consent, in what capacity, and what less restrictive alternatives were tried first?

"That's how the secure wing works" is not a justification. It is a staffing decision dressed up as care. The same applies to sedation: an antipsychotic used to settle behaviour is a chemical restraint unless it treats a diagnosed condition, and it carries the same obligations.

What is normal adjustment — and what is not

You will be told to give it time, and for a few weeks that is fair. Disorientation, grief, anger at the family, constant requests to go home: these are expected reactions to an unchosen move at 85.

What is not adjustment, and should get you a clinical appointment within the week:

• weight loss or a refusal to eat that settles in;
• new sedation — flat affect, slowed speech, sleeping through the day;
• stopping walking when she walked a month ago;
• a sudden worsening of confusion, which in an older person usually signals infection or untreated pain before it signals decline.

Ask for a medication review — a pharmacist-conducted one is fundable and you can request it through the GP. A great many "I want to leave" complaints dissolve once the real cause is fixed: pain, an impossible table companion, a noisy room, a bedtime set by the roster.

If nobody is listening

1. A written meeting request to the facility manager and the care manager, with your questions emailed in advance. That leaves a record; a corridor conversation does not.
2. The provider's own complaints process, in writing, with a date.
3. The Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission, which handles complaints directly and can act on them. You can complain without your parent's name being disclosed to the provider if you ask.
4. Your state or territory's public advocate or guardianship tribunal, if the dispute is about who decides where your parent lives.
5. The Older Persons Advocacy Network, which is free, independent, and will speak for what your parent wants — not what the family wants.

Before choosing a new home, pull its star rating and, more usefully, the underlying quality indicators and any non-compliance notices. A home with a recent finding on medication management or restrictive practices is telling you something the tour will not.

What to decide this week

Write three lines, calmly: what made home impossible; what would be different now; what exactly your parent objects to about this home. If the third line is full and the second is empty, you are not planning a move home — you are looking for a different home.

If that is where you are and you have no energy for another round of phone calls, we will do that part. Tell us the area, your parent's care needs and what went wrong this time, and you get a shortlist worth calling, for A$109. Start here

This article is general information for families, not legal or medical advice. Your parent's rights depend on their resident agreement, their capacity, and the aged care and guardianship law applying in their state or territory. Curalune does not allocate beds and does not guarantee availability.