Home Modifications Wollongong
Wollongong homes climb. Steep driveways, split levels, stairs to the front door and a view that costs a hip to reach: the escarpment shapes the housing, and the housing shapes the falls. We are occupational therapists who visit the Illawarra, assess your home as it actually is, and write the evidence NDIS and aged care funders need before anything is built.
A visiting OT service for Wollongong and the Illawarra
We are a Sydney-based mobile team that assesses in the Illawarra by arrangement, from Helensburgh down through Wollongong, Figtree, Unanderra, Dapto and Shellharbour. Visits are scheduled rather than same-day, which we say plainly because it matters for planning: urgent situations are triaged honestly, and where a local service could genuinely see you faster for a simple item, we will tell you that too.
What we bring in exchange is depth on the funding side: modification reports built for NDIS and aged care decision making, with the alternatives addressed and the clinical case evidenced from observation, which is the difference between a request that moves and a quote that waits.
Steep blocks, split levels and the escarpment effect
The Illawarra’s geography gets into its floor plans. The modification questions here have a vertical dimension that flatter suburbs never see.
A Wollongong home routinely stacks its risks: a driveway too steep for a walker before you reach the door, external stairs to the entry, then a split-level interior with two or three steps between living and sleeping. Each transition is small on its own. Together they mean a person with declining mobility can be stranded on a single level of their own home, or worse, keep attempting transitions their balance no longer supports.
Gradient also changes what solutions are honest. A ramp needs run length, and a steep block often does not have it: a compliant gradient from a high front door can require more ramp than the front yard holds. In those homes the real options move to rails and half-steps, re-routing entry through the garage or a rear door, platform solutions, or, where the levels cannot be reconciled with the person’s trajectory, an honest conversation about whether this house can keep serving them. We assess all of it against the person’s actual function, and we put the arithmetic in the report so nobody funds a ramp that could never have fit.
The Illawarra work we assess
NDIS and aged care: one assessment discipline, two funding worlds
Wollongong referrals reach us in near-equal parts from NDIS coordinators and from families supporting older parents. The clinical work is the same. The paperwork is not.
For NDIS participants, modification evidence answers the reasonable and necessary test: function, alternatives, consequence. For older people, funding runs through aged care programs such as Home Care Packages and CHSP, each with its own rules about what modifications can be supported and how they are arranged, and those rules change over time. The report has to be written for the program it is going to, and we confirm the funding pathway at referral so the document fits the door it will walk through.
Where a family is unsure which world they are even in, that is a normal starting question, not an embarrassing one. Tell us the person’s age, situation and supports, and we will point you to the right pathway honestly, including when the answer is a program we do not work under.
Aged care program rules and inclusions change. Whether any modification is funded is decided by the relevant program or the NDIA against its own criteria; confirm the current position with your package provider, planner or support coordinator.
A Wollongong scenario, worked through
The situation
A man in his seventies living with Parkinson’s disease shares a split-level Figtree home with his wife. His freezing episodes are becoming more frequent, and the home’s geography is working against him: two steps between kitchen and lounge, a steep driveway to the letterbox, and a main bathroom a half-flight from the bedroom. His daughter, who manages his Home Care Package, wants “a ramp and rails everywhere” before winter. His wife wants him to stop attempting the driveway at all.
What we would do
Assess him at home at two points in his medication cycle, because Parkinson’s function can differ dramatically across a day and a report built on his best hour would mislead everyone. Watch the actual transitions: the internal steps, the bathroom approach, the driveway. Map which transitions matter to his day and which can be designed out entirely. Talk with him and his wife together and separately, because their accounts of the near-misses will differ, and both are evidence.
What the report would set out
Internal rails and step treatments at the kitchen-lounge transition, specified for freezing episodes, with visual cues at the step edges; a bedroom-level toileting solution so the half-flight stops being a nightly journey; the driveway assessed honestly, with the letterbox task redesigned rather than the driveway rebuilt, because no compliant ramp fits that gradient; and the package-level reasoning for each item so his daughter can take the document straight to the provider. It would also record what was deliberately not recommended, and why, which protects the family from re-litigating the same options every review.
Why the whole family could rely on it
Because it is built on function observed across the medication cycle rather than a single visit, it separates the transitions worth engineering from the tasks worth redesigning, and every recommendation carries its reasoning and its alternative. A funder, a provider and a worried family can all act on it without translating it first.
Paying for modifications in the Illawarra
We take referrals funded through the NDIS (plan-managed and self-managed), Home Care Packages, CHSP, Medicare (GP referral) and privately. Assessment time is charged at the NDIS occupational therapy rate of $193.99 per hour for 2026-27, with hours, including travel arrangements for Illawarra visits, quoted transparently before we start. Whether modification works are funded is decided by the NDIA or the relevant aged care program, and no assessment can guarantee an approval. The pathways are explained in our guides to minor versus complex modifications and falls prevention at home.
Home modification OTs across our service area
For the broader functional picture in the Illawarra, see our functional capacity assessments in Wollongong, or the evidence standard behind every report on our assessment methodology page.
Wollongong home modifications: your questions
Do you really cover Wollongong from Sydney?
Our block is too steep for a ramp. What are the options?
My parent is over 65. Does the NDIS cover their modifications?
Parkinson’s and similar conditions fluctuate. How do you assess that fairly?
What does an Illawarra assessment cost?
Book a home modification assessment in Wollongong
Send a referral or an enquiry below, or call 1300 316 664.
The view is worth keeping. The falls are not.
Talk to our OT team about a home modification assessment in Wollongong and across the Illawarra.
Make a referral or call 1300 316 664