Built by a clinician.
For the families he couldn't help enough.

Where this came from

I'm a practising GP. Over more than a decade in general practice, I've had hundreds of conversations with adult children, partners, and siblings who are caring for someone they love — and are completely lost.

Not lost because they aren't capable. Lost because the systems they need to navigate are genuinely complicated, the information is buried across dozens of government websites, and nobody — not the hospital, not the specialist, rarely even the GP — has sat down and explained it in plain English.

The same conversations kept happening in my consulting room:

• A daughter who didn't know her mother was entitled to a Home Care Package — for three years. Three years of paying for services the government would have funded.
• A husband providing round-the-clock care who had never heard of Carer's Allowance. Never been told it existed.
• A son who had flown in from overseas and needed to understand the entire aged care system in a weekend before he flew home.
• Families who had missed the window to set up Power of Attorney — because nobody told them the window closes when capacity is lost, and by the time they asked, it was already too late.
• Carers who had been burning out for months, quietly, because they didn't know respite funding existed or how to access it.

In a 15-minute consultation, I can do a lot. But I cannot teach someone the entire aged care system, the NHS care pathway, or the Centrelink entitlements landscape. I kept thinking: there should be somewhere I can send these people. A resource that explains the system clearly, in the language families actually speak, without requiring them to already know what questions to ask.

CarerCompass is that resource.

The families who navigate care well aren't the ones with the most money or connections. They're the ones who know what questions to ask — and who to ask them to. That knowledge shouldn't be a privilege. That's what this is.

What CarerCompass actually does

CarerCompass is a free navigation platform for family carers across six countries. It covers the systems around the clinical decisions — the funding, the assessments, the legal documents, the services, the payments that go unclaimed for years.

It is designed to be read in a crisis. At 11pm, on a phone, by someone who is exhausted and doesn't know where to start. Which means it has to be honest about what matters most, in what order — not comprehensive in the way that makes something useless.

Six countries because the carers who need this most are often navigating from a distance — managing a parent's care from another city, another country, another time zone. The diaspora reality of modern caring is something almost no resource acknowledges.

What's on the site

The country guides explain each national system in plain English — what to do first, how assessments work, which payments most families miss, and what the legal documents are called and when they need to be signed. These will always be free.

The Entitlements Checker is the tool I wish I'd had to hand for years. Answer seven questions and it shows you specifically what government payments and services you may be missing — with direct links to apply. Most carers are claiming less than half of what they're entitled to. In every country. The money exists. It just doesn't find people; people have to find it.

The "Am I a carer?" screener exists because most people who are caring for someone never identify themselves as carers. They're "just" a daughter, "just" a husband. That self-identification gap is why entitlements go unclaimed, why assessments are never requested, why people burn out without ever knowing help was available.

The AI Carer Navigator lets you describe your situation in plain English and get a personalised pathway through the relevant system — what to do, in what order, specific to your country and circumstances. It's the 15-minute conversation I wish every carer could have with someone who knew the system.

The practical tools — the GP Question Builder, the Emergency Information Sheet, the Medication Tracker, the Symptom Log, the Care Plan, the Carer Handover Note — were built because I kept watching families come to appointments unprepared, hand over care with nothing written down, or be unable to describe their person's medication list to a paramedic. These problems are entirely solvable with the right prompts.

The Dementia First Steps guide and Carer Burnout Self-Check address the two situations where families are most likely to be completely lost and most likely to benefit from immediate, clear guidance.

What CarerCompass is not

It is not medical advice. The guides explain systems — how funding works, what legal documents you need, how to access services. They do not tell you what treatment someone should receive, whether a care home is the right decision, or whether a particular medication is appropriate. Those questions belong with the clinical team who knows your family member.

CarerCompass helps you prepare for those conversations, understand the context, and ask the right questions. It does not replace them.

The principles

The Holiday Visit Guide is built for the adult children who live far away — covering what to observe when you haven't seen your parents in months, the conversations everyone avoids, and how to run the family meeting that needs to happen while everyone is still in the same room.

Why anonymous

I've chosen not to put my name on CarerCompass publicly, for a specific reason. The moment a clinician's name is attached to a health resource, some people start treating it as personal medical advice. It isn't — and I want that to be unambiguous.

I also have patients. I don't want someone reading a guide here and arriving at their next appointment with expectations shaped by what they read on a website, rather than by their own clinical situation. The guides explain systems. Your GP explains your situation. Those are different things.

The content is reviewed periodically against current government policy and clinical guidance. If something is out of date or wrong, I want to know — it matters.

Get in touch

If a guide contains an error, if policy has changed and the site hasn't caught up, if something important is missing for your country — please tell me. CarerCompass is only useful if it's accurate, and I can't catch everything from a consulting room.

Email: hello@carercompass.org

Response times may vary — I'm still a full-time GP.