Your overseas care experience counts here — even without recognition

You've already done this work. It just isn't on paper here yet.

If that's you, here it is straight: what the work actually involves, what it pays, what it costs to set up, and how to start — from someone running the same business, part-time, in regional Tasmania.

1. This page is for people who have already done the work

Overseas nursing homes, home care, disability services, hospitals, or years of looking after your own family — if you have done the hands-on part, you already hold the thing that takes years to learn. This isn't a page about starting from nothing. It's about being paid, here, for what you already know how to do.

2. Not being recognised isn't a barrier for everyday support

Recognition matters for clinical and regulated work. Everyday support — household help, meals, shopping, transport, company — doesn't require your overseas qualification to be recognised. The work needs the experience, not the paperwork.

If you do want to use your qualification here — nursing, for example — that's a separate path with its own body and rules, and worth looking into on its own terms. This is the shorter road, and it starts with what you already have.

3. Your community is your advantage

Families value someone who understands their language, their food and their way of doing things, and who their parents can talk to easily. That is a real business advantage, and it's not something a big provider can send a stranger in to copy.

4. The money

Household tasks bill at $60.10 an hour and community and social participation at $73.58 on a weekday — gross billing, before insurance, tax, travel and your own unpaid admin.

5. The setup, and the honest caveats

Police check, first aid, an ABN and an NDIS Worker Screening Check. Two things to check for yourself: your working rights (your visa conditions are separate from all of this, and they come first), and whether you want to add personal care — which is where a recognised qualification or registration can matter.

Where to go next

Being straight with you. The hourly figures on this page are the billing rates from the official NDIS Pricing Schedule — the most that can be charged for that support. They're gross revenue, not take-home. Insurance, tax, super, travel and your own time all come out of it. And the income examples are Cathy's real numbers, not a promise about yours.

Experience travels. Paperwork doesn't have to. You don't need a local certificate to start doing everyday support for people in your own community — you need the experience you already have, and a small, legal setup.

The free training is below — the honest version of how this works, in plain language. It's free, and it stays free.