Our Story

1980:

The Home and Community Care program was developed as a joint initiative of the State and Commonwealth governments. Many programs evolved but all had the same charter – to keep the frail aged and people of all ages with a disability, safely within their own homes rather than being placed in institutionalised care. One of the programs that evolved was called the Home Modification & Maintenance Services.

1987:

The Illawarra Community Housing Trust (ICHT) took on the auspice of the Illawarra Home Modification & Maintenance Service (HMMS). This grew into three main divisions: Community Housing Services, Disability Accomodation Support Services (DASS) and the Home and Community Care (HACC) service division.

2003:

After extensive consultations and research, the Board of ICHT decided that the HACC Services Division should also be more appropriately auspiced. The preference was for an auspice body that would be focused on the specific needs of home modification and maintenance related services to the HACC Community.

To meet this need, our organisation was formed and initially known as South Coast Home Modification and Maintenance Service Ltd, continuing to operate within the ICHT HACC Service Division programs.

2005:

Permission was granted by the funding body at the time, ADHC, for all of the HACC Service Division programs to be reauspiced through a newly created not-for-profit auspice – we became a stand-alone auspice and underwent a trading name change to Scope Access Ltd.

2011:

Programs were split between aged care and disability clients and were funded through Department of Health & Ageing (Commonwealth) and NSW Department of Family & Community Services (FACS) ADHC. Aged care funding transitioned from the 30+ year old Home and Community Care (HACC) Program to the new Commonwealth Home Support Program (CHSP).

2014:

We underwent a trading name change and rebranding to become Scope Home Access.

2018:

ADHC funding for disability services ceased completely on 30th June 2018 as the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) was rolled out across Australia.

2019:

Across 2018 and early 2019, the organisation went through a significant restructure to ensure back-end administration and support was running as efficiently as possible. This process meant that we were able to provide greater subsidies for funded aged care clients ongoing.

2020 onwards:

Work continues towards positioning Scope Home Access at the forefront of consumer awareness as a provider of advice, support and service to assist older Australians, people with a disability at any age and the carers for these two groups, to find a way to stay in the homes and communities they choose.