DTC Care director PRAKASH BHATTARAI says he and his wife, Yamuna Karki, who is also the general manager, are both originally from Nepal, home of the brave sherpas who lead climbers up Mount Everest.

“If you want to climb Mount Everest, first there is base camp, then second base camp, then the top of Mount Everest, and a sherpa is assigned to you from base camp one,” says Prakash Bhattari.

“The sherpa, in the morning, he wakes up at 1am, and makes a way, and puts up the ropes so that you can walk and climb to base two.

“Then, again, he makes a way around, and makes the ropes for you so that you can have that climbing certificate.

“We have these kinds of roots, and like the sherpas of Mount Everest, we give our life to help others complete their goals.”

For nearly two years, DTC Care has been providing client-informed, one-on-one home support across the ACT and NSW.

Standing for “Dignity, Trust and Compassion”, Prakash says DTC always strives to achieve the best outcomes for its clients.

After observing the impactful shortages in his wife’s sector of aged care during covid, Prakash says he wanted to provide a service that could directly help the community.

They offer services ranging from simple outings, such as transportation to appointments or assistance with shopping, to specialised hygiene assistance such as urinal management, catheter management, or end-of-life social support.

Importantly, all staff, including those in administration, are certified to work as support workers, Prakash says, so if there ever is a day where they are short-staffed, clients do not have to miss appointments or worry if they will receive the care they need.

“In Nepal, we live in a group, we live with our grandparents. We have that caring nature in our blood,” says Prakash.

“We specialise in personal care because that’s our nature, we are compassionate and caring people.

“We focus more on personalised support plans, we listen to them, and we prepare their plans, and we get their feedback as well.”

Prakash also has a background in teaching meditation, which he says helps him to bring a sense of calm to clients and staff.

“Most people are looking for some kind of peace, and with that strength, we can handle that stress when a client is having high intensity of anger or something similar” he says.

To ensure they provide the best home support services they can, Prakash says DTC Care is dedicated to arranging frequent in-house and online training for all their support workers.

This commitment to providing the best support for their workers means they can provide the best care for their clients, says Prakash, and it is part of what makes them such a reliable source of support.

Robert Ryan has been a client of DTC Care for the last year and a half, and he says it is this reliability that is their stand-out quality.

Robert says: “They’re very positive in a certain way of trying to get people motivated to get out into the community, to socialise.

“They’re very good people.”

Another client of DTC Care, Patrizia Nash, says that DTC Care “saved her life”.

Patrizia helps to look after her niece, who has very complex needs, including primary progressive multiple sclerosis, and is an above-knee amputee with an additional pressure wound that has massively limited her movements.

They have been clients of DTC Care for just over a year now, says Patrizia.

She says: “One of the main things is trust and honesty, and if you don’t have that in a support worker, you’re fighting a losing battle.

“I can’t fault them in any shape or form, Prakash himself provides me with advice and understanding as well, […] so it’s not just centred on the client, it’s a holistic thing.”

“Their caring nature is so profound that you could compare it to a mother looking after their own child.”

Prakash says receiving positive feedback like this is what keeps them motivated.

He says: “Last year, we helped one family, who, one of the relatives was going to be in palliative care, so the family were already exhausted, and we came in, and they were so relieved, and they are still in contact.

“We looked after them for just like three or four days, but they are still sending us messages, and they left so much feedback to support co-ordinators that most of our clients came from them.”

DTC Care. Call 0426 803524, or visit dtccare.com.au for more information and to access a referral form.