About · For organisations

A trusted front door to everyday help

For older people, people living with disability, and the family members who organise life for them. Describe a need in plain words; AskFam works out which service covers it, exactly what to ask for, and who is nearby — free, Australia-wide, no account.

Australia-wide across all 18,514 localities, 31 categories of everyday help understood, over 100 curated providers shown as checked or not-yet-checked, and no cost to the family — no account, no fee, no commission.

The help exists. Finding the right door does not.

Aged care, the NDIS, the Commonwealth Home Support Programme, Carer Gateway, council community services — each is a genuine source of help, and each is a separate system with its own eligibility, vocabulary and intake process. The person organising is usually an adult child, mid-crisis, on a phone, who doesn't know that "help around the home" and "domestic assistance under a package" are the same thing.

Describe it once, in your own words.

Behind a single box is a careful sequence: understand the need, check whether it's a situation that needs a person rather than a provider list, ask one question only if it changes the answer, then find and explain what's nearby — anywhere in Australia. The location field searches all 18,514 localities, and knows there is a Claremont in three states.

The answer does the translating.

The most valuable thing on the answer screen is knowing what to say. AskFam leads with local options, then names the subsidised and free front doors that cover the need (My Aged Care, the NDIS, Carer Gateway, the council), and gives the exact phrase to use so the call lands. A provider a person has verified is shown as Verified; every other listing is shown plainly as "not checked — a starting point, not a recommendation." Price and availability are never shown unless a provider confirmed them.

More than a directory — families and helpers, connected directly.

The other half of AskFam is a place where a family can post an everyday task and what they'd pay, and local people — paid workers and volunteers — can offer to do it, directly. AskFam takes no commission, handles no money, and is not part of the arrangement. Only everyday tasks can be posted; a sensitive or clinical need is never turned into a job. This is where local volunteering meets local need.

Built to be careful with vulnerable people.

A request that signals risk — a fall, wandering at night, a medication worry, a welfare concern, coming home from hospital — never returns a provider listing. It routes to a real, staffed service, and this is enforced in the software before any supply is considered. An unchecked provider can never be a recommendation for a sensitive, in-home situation. No clinical data is ever held, and there is no paid placement. A person can get a full answer without ever saying who they are.

What "everyday help" means, in full.

AskFam understands 31 categories of everyday help and matches real providers to each, across all of Australia: around the home (cleaning, domestic assistance, laundry, handyman, home modifications & accessibility); the garden; personal support (support workers, personal & nursing care, mobile allied health & podiatry, mobile hairdressing); company & getting out; transport (community & assisted transport, accessible taxis, rideshare); meals & food; errands; pets; everyday tech; and family & children. Coverage reaches into multicultural (CALD) and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander services, and the free government programs — Meals on Wheels, Carer Gateway, Be Connected.

A free router now — and an instrument for what's missing.

Because AskFam sits where a real person describes a real need in a real place, it produces a live map of unmet demand: when it has nothing good to offer, it records that honestly, and over time that becomes the clearest picture of which everyday-help gaps to close, and where. It complements public services rather than competing with them — a neutral, free, plain-language layer on top of the system that already exists.

Where a department or agency fits.

• Lighten the navigation burden — a plain-language front door that gets families to the right service, and the right phrasing, before they reach a phone queue.
• Reach the people who bounce off forms — those who can't name what they need still get a useful answer.
• See real demand — aggregate, de-identified signal on which everyday-help needs are unmet, and where.
• Endorse or embed — list AskFam on a resources page or reference it in intake material.
• No cost, no lock-in, no data trade.

What AskFam is not: not a service provider, not a funder, no clinical advice, no service payments, no paid placement, not a data broker. It is a front door: it understands the need, and hands the person on to the service that already exists.

AskFam is live, free, and Australia-wide today. To discuss listing, referral or endorsement: askfam.org · [email protected] · operated by Circlo.Space (ABN 58 457 299 442).