What we were still figuring out.
An honest look at where Lively’s model was still finding its feet.
Business model
Ultimately, Lively faced barriers in scaling its business model, which extended its reliance on funding from supportive philanthropic backers (check them out at What Lively Was). At the time of Lively’s closure, philanthropic funding made up around 45% of Lively’s revenue, and a shortfall ultimately forced the closure of the business. These were some of the key challenges:
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In spite of the strong client data pointing to the efficacy of the model, Lively encountered sustained difficulties in growing its customer base. As Lively’s business model had narrow margins, its long-term success relied on scaling in order to lessen its reliance on philanthropic funding.
Lively's model was designed to be delivered in partnership with home care providers and local councils, who could refer their clients for support from a Lively Helper, using their Home Care Package or CHSP funding.
However, it was an ongoing challenge to obtain an adequate volume of referrals for sustainability. Lively had difficulty bringing on new referral partners, and new partners frequently over-estimated the number of referrals they expected to send.
The team identified a number of contributing factors:
The team had difficulty effectively marketing the value of Lively’s approach. Many providers perceived that Lively’s service was a “nice to have”, rather than an essential support service that could also meet clients’ domestic assistance or transport needs.
Many providers wanted workforce solutions that could deliver immediate staff to fill vacant shifts—something Lively wasn't set up to offer, and which didn’t suit our purpose to build meaningful, lasting relationships between Helpers and members which took longer to set up but were more stable over time.
The outsourcing of assessment services from local councils in 2024 also prompted referrals from Lively’s council partners to freeze for more than six months.
High levels of instability and change in the aged care sector caused many providers to defer undertaking a new and unfamiliar program. Lively existed during a tumultuous decade in aged care, having been founded soon after the introduction of home care packages in 2013 and launching its home care package program immediately before the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. This was also shortly before the Aged Care Royal Commission final report in 2021. Lively closed immediately after the new Aged Care Act came into effect in 2025.
In order to reduce its reliance on external providers, Lively chose to become an accredited home care provider, and acquired a handful of home care package holders over three years. However, Lively struggled to break into the home care package market and stand out as a small provider. With only a small number of package holders, Lively couldn't sustain the cost and complexity of maintaining them and ultimately chose to discontinue package management.
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In spite of its best efforts, the Lively team had significant difficulty growing the average number of hours of work undertaken by individual Lively Helpers.
On average, Lively Helpers worked 5–6 hours per week across the year, although in reality hours ranged from 2–12 hours across the cohort of 30 Helpers.
There were a number of contributing reasons for this:
Supply and demand was extremely difficult to manage in Lively’s partnership model. Referring partners frequently over-forecast their referrals, resulting in over-hiring at Lively. Low hours forced Helpers to take on external work, limiting their availability for new referrals and prompting more hiring.
Referral needs were varied in terms of location, language needs and vehicle access. Frequently one person could not meet all needs, so two or more people were hired.
The self-scheduling of Lively’s in-home program involved unpaid administration time that significantly mounted as Helpers took on more clients. This often limited Helpers’ appetite for more clients.
The work was personally demanding for young people. A majority of Helpers found it challenging to juggle relationships with more than 5–6 older people.
The consequences of this were:
Lively Helpers typically could not rely on Lively as their sole income, with a few exceptions. As an element Lively’s mission was to create meaningful employment for young, the team felt it was falling short in this area.
Fuelled by the extensive support and training offered to individual Helpers, the low working hours negatively affected Lively’s profit margin, which led to greater reliance on philanthropic support.
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Integrating with the Australian government-subsidised aged care scheme was essential for Lively in order to reach more older people. However, Lively’s intergenerational care approach faced a number of systemic barriers in aged care that presented real challenges to the Lively team as they worked towards a sustainable model.
Lively’s model was often challenging to align with the highly siloed service categories in aged care. Lively Helpers could simultaneously provide social support, domestic assistance, basic garden maintenance and transport. While this flexibility was extremely highly valued by Lively members and allowed for more creativity and collaboration, it was often resisted by providers who worried about the miscategorisation of services when claiming government funds to cover them. This often limited the full scope of activities.
The strictness of aged care compliance requirements, as well as the increasing attention on the failures of the aged care system, led many providers to be highly risk-averse, even beyond actual regulatory requirements. In particular, many providers were reluctant to trial a novel model with an ‘unqualified’ worker, despite the fact that it was compliant under the Act for Helpers providing Lively’s service types to have had on-the-job training only.
Australia’s aged care system also favours large providers who can afford the significant administration costs that come with compliance obligations. Mounting compliance requirements led to significant administration costs that ate away at Lively’s profit margin. As one example, Lively initially required a single police check for Helpers. However, when the Support at Home reforms were introduced, Lively’s screening obligations increased to include a police check, a working with children’s check and a statutory declaration for anyone who had been a citizen of another country since the age of 16. These costs had to be worn by Lively.
High levels of change and uncertainty also demanded continual pivoting as the external landscape of aged care evolved (see point #1).
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While the older people participating in Lively programs rated the service highly, not all were interested in the relationship-building element of the program.
While Lively hired young people with an active interest in developing friendships with older people, many Lively members treated their Helpers exclusively as cleaners or gardeners, expecting minimal interaction. Some members resisted playing an instructional role for a service for which they were the customer.
Lively continued to support these members, but it removed the services’s defining dynamic of intergenerational connection.
In conversation with Lively’s ‘Brains Trust’—the client advisory group meeting bimonthly—the Lively team was beginning to explore ways to invite new members to step into their roles as mentors and guides, a role with which many older people may not identify as traditional eldership roles have eroded.
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Lively had mixed success in catering to young people who faced persistent barriers to employment.
Data suggested that Lively typically did not employ who were facing persistent and sustained employment barriers, as a majority of Lively Helpers also held a second job prior to and while working at Lively. Incoming Helpers also did not appear to face the barrier of low confidence, as 92% of new Helpers reported confidence in themselves and their abilities.
An inherent challenge of Lively’s model was the company’s obligation to deliver a high-quality and safe service to another vulnerable group: older people. This required screening for certain measures of reliability. These screening questions may have had the effect of disadvantaging young people in situations of high precarity that affected their ability to demonstrate consistency through the application process.
On the other hand, there was evidence that new Lively Helpers did indeed experience some employment barriers; 76% said that the jobs for which they were applying required experience they did not have, while 64% said these jobs required qualifications they did not have. 64% said they felt they were underestimated by employers.
Lively also attracted a diverse workforce of young people who frequently experience higher levels of unemployment or underemployment. At Lively’s closing, almost 50% of Helpers identified as LGBTQIA+ and 45% were of non-European backgrounds, fuelled by the growth of Lively’s Community Tech Help programs catering to the Chinese and Vietnamese communities.
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Lively was founded in response to pervasive ageism in the Australian community, social isolation amongst older Australians and an aged care sector that struggled to find a workforce that could meet their needs
By developing an attractive employment model that could unlock a new community of young workers, Lively aimed to combat these shared challenges.
However, the Lively team was frequently confronted by the limitations of one model to solve these systemic issues. While Lively was able to successfully offer a highly relational, flexible and person-centred service, it was still limited by the strictures of the aged care system and the resources made available by it. Sessions were commonly limited to two hours per fortnight due to funding constraints, meaning it took longer for relationships to evolve and goals to be met.
As will be familiar to many support workers, Lively Helpers frequently found themselves to be the sole constant presence in their clients’ lives. While there were many inspiring stories of life-changing connections, Helpers were often confronted with their own inability to meet their clients’ diverse needs for company, practical support and participation. This sometimes led to distress and burnout.
The aged care sector cannot completely substitute the traditional role of informal support networks in caring for elders, and the Lively team encourages readers to get involved in the work of Good Flock to shift Australia’s culture around ageing.
Impact
While Lively’s impact was undeniable in many areas, there were still aspects of the organisation’s mission where the team felt it had a way to go.
