Who Pays The Price For A Confusing Front Door
Walk with me through a very normal Tuesday.
A daughter is on her lunch break, parked outside a shopping centre with the aircon running. One earbud in, My Aged Care on hold. She has a notebook on her lap. Two highlighters. Three different reference numbers.
She is not here because she has spare time. She is here because her mother fell again on the weekend, the GP mentioned “more support”, and now she has stepped into a maze
This is what “the front door” really feels like for most families.
It is not a single doorway. It is:
My Aged Care assessment and wait times.
Co payment questions that do not match what the brochure promised.
A Services Australia conversation that feels like an audit.
A mix of phone calls, portals, and letters that all use different language for the same thing.
By the time support lands, many people are already exhausted. They have not even met your team yet and the system has already spent their trust.
This is what I call navigation harm and narrative harm.
And leaders pay for it in ways most budgets never name.
Navigation harm, narrative harm, and who carries the load
Navigation harm is what happens when a system makes the path so confusing that people lose energy, time and confidence just trying to get through the door.
Narrative harm is what happens when the story keeps changing.
“We were told there would be no co payments.”
“We thought this support was free.”
“No one explained hardship without making us feel like we were begging.”
In practice, it looks like this:
Staff spending long chunks of time explaining letters they did not write.
Coordinators absorbing anger that belongs to the system, not to them.
Leaders trying to de escalate families who feel tricked by mixed messages.
None of this shows up in the official indicators. It shows up in:
Longer first appointments.
More complaints that start with “no one told us”.
Team meetings that slowly turn into venting about “the front door” rather than the care.
Good leaders do what good leaders always do. They patch it.
They become shadow navigators.
They spend evenings rewriting letters in plain language.
They answer “just one more question” in the car park.
They brief their team on the latest portal changes using screenshots and sticky notes.
The work gets done.
The cost gets hidden.
Why this matters for leadership, not just comms
From a leadership lens, front door confusion is not a communications problem. It is a systems cost.
It quietly drains:
Trust
People arrive already sceptical because the story about cost and access has shifted three times before they walk in.Capacity
Managers and coordinators spend cognitive and emotional energy on work that sits outside their PD, and rarely outside their conscience.Retention
The staff who are best at navigating the gap between policy and reality are often the first ones to burn out from carrying it.
When we talk about leadership pipelines and workforce sustainability, this is part of the story.
The front door is not neutral. It shapes the week, the tone, and the likelihood that people stay.
Three moves leaders can make this quarter
You do not need a full redesign of My Aged Care to reduce navigation and narrative harm.
You need small moves that sit inside your control.
1. Log navigation stress, not just complaints
Most services record formal complaints. Fewer track everyday navigation friction.
Try this for one month:
Ask intake, reception and front line staff to keep a simple tally:
How many times today did someone say “I am confused” or “this is different to what I was told”
How many times did staff have to explain co payments, hardship, or Services Australia letters that came from outside your organisation
Note the themes, not just the numbers:
Was it about money
About eligibility
About fear of “getting it wrong”
At the end of the month, bring three patterns to your leadership meeting.
You now have something better than anecdotes. You have evidence of where navigation harm shows up in your real service.
2. Fix one step in one pathway
The temptation is to fix everything.
A better move is to improve one pathway in a way people can feel.
Pick one common scenario, for example:
“Daughter calling after a fall at home.”
“Partner trying to understand co payments months after admission.”
“Carer juggling an NDIS to aged care transition.”
Then:
Map the first three contacts they have with your service.
Highlight every point where the language or expectations change.
Rewrite one step so it feels calmer, clearer and kinder.
For example:
Replace three different scripts about hardship with one short explanation.
Add a single line to your welcome pack: “If you are worried about co payments, call us before you cancel support. We can talk through options.”
Create a tiny “what this really means” box next to jargon in any letter you control.
You are not fixing the whole system. You are reducing the friction your people can control.
3. Align the story from board paper to waiting room
Narrative harm often happens because the story sounds different depending on where you stand.
Board papers talk about “cost recovery”, “co payment risk”, or “optimising revenue”.
Staff talk about “trying not to upset families”.
Families hear “we cannot afford this” or “we are being punished for asking for help”.
Leaders sit in the middle, trying to translate all three.
Once a quarter, take one key concept, for example: hardship, co payments, or what happens when a person cannot contribute.
Then ask:
How do we talk about this in the board pack
How do we talk about this with staff
How do we talk about this with families
If those three versions do not sound like cousins of each other, you have a narrative gap.
Bring them closer together by:
Removing language you would never want a family to overhear.
Adding one clear line to staff briefings about why a decision exists, not just what it is.
Checking that any public explanation does not quietly contradict the internal one.
Leadership is often about this kind of quiet alignment.
Not a big launch, just less narrative harm in the everyday.
What this signals to your managers
When leaders take navigation and narrative harm seriously, it sends two important messages to managers and coordinators:
“We see the invisible work you are doing.”
“We are willing to change structures, not just tell you to be more resilient.”
That matters.
Because the people holding the corridor steady are watching how you respond.
They notice when front door confusion is treated as “just how it is”.
They also notice when you fix one step and make it stick.
Where mentoring fits in
Mentoring will not rewrite My Aged Care or remove co payments.
What it can do is:
Give leaders a place to name the navigation load they are carrying.
Help them design small, realistic moves that sit inside real rosters and finite energy.
Turn good intentions into weekly habits that reduce navigation and narrative harm over time.
In practice, that might look like:
Using mentoring sessions to bring one “navigation jam” at a time and working through how to respond more clearly next week.
Testing a small change, such as a clearer way to explain hardship or co payments, and then debriefing what happened.
Preparing language and boundaries for conversations with executives so navigation harm is named as a system issue, not just “staff stress”.
These are not dramatic fixes. They are the kind of quiet adjustments that help leaders feel less alone in the mess and make the system a little easier to enter, one week at a time.Those are not headline moments. They are the quiet repairs that help good systems grow.
If you are responsible for the front door
If you hold a role in workforce, operations, or reform, and you see your team patching navigation and narrative harm with their own bodies, this is not a personal failing. It is a system telling you where it needs redesign.
Three questions to take into your next leadership conversation:
Where is navigation harm most obvious in our service right now
Who is paying for it with their time, energy, or health
What is one step we can improve in the next quarter, and how will we know it worked
If you want a second pair of eyes on how navigation and leadership systems interact in your service, you can explore how I work with organisations on the For Organisations and Consulting pages at Hyphae Network, or get in touch through the contact form there.
About the author
Samantha Bowen is the Founding Director of Hyphae Network, based in Western Australia. She works with leaders across aged care, health and community services to build mentoring and leadership systems that hold under pressure. Her programs have supported thousands of leaders nationally, helping organisations move beyond good intentions to structures that actually sustain their people.
Find options for us to work together on the For Organisations page, or get in touch via the Contact page.
Next step
When you finish reading, take two minutes and write down:
One family or carer you know who wrestled with the front door.
One leader in your organisation who quietly patched the gap.
That is where your next system change probably lives.
Quick FAQ for leaders and executives
What is navigation harm in aged care and health services
Navigation harm happens when people lose time, energy, money, or trust because the front door of a service is too complex to move through. In aged care and health this often shows up as confusing referrals, unclear co payment information, or repeated handoffs before anyone can say what support is available.
What is narrative harm and why does it matter
Narrative harm is the damage done when the story people hear about care does not match what they experience. For example, when a service says “we are here to help” but every step feels like scrutiny or blame, families and staff learn that the system cannot be believed. Over time that erodes trust, increases complaints, and makes every future change harder to land.
How can leaders reduce navigation and narrative harm without new funding
Most of the work starts with clarity, not cash. Leaders can map one common pathway and remove three avoidable steps, write a short plain language script for co payments or hardship, and make sure the story in board papers matches what is said at reception. Small changes at the front door often save staff time, reduce repeat calls, and lower frustration on both sides.
How does mentoring support leaders who are stuck acting as “shadow navigators”
Mentoring gives leaders a safe place to name the hidden navigation work they are doing and to design realistic ways to share or reshape it. Instead of carrying every “can you help me understand this” conversation alone, they can use mentoring to practise clearer responses, set boundaries, and take navigation harm to the right table as a system issue.
How can organisations work with Hyphae Network on navigation, leadership and mentoring systems
Hyphae works with providers who want support to make their leadership and mentoring efforts practical, measurable, and aligned with real front door pressures. This can include leadership sessions on mentoring infrastructure that fits real rosters, and light tools leaders can use inside the week. You can see options for organisational work on the For Organisations page, or get in touch via the Contact page.
AI summary
This article explains how confusing aged care intake pathways create “navigation harm” for families and quiet burnout for managers. It describes how mixed messages about costs, co payments, and eligibility turn leaders into shadow navigators who are never properly resourced. The piece outlines three practical moves for providers, logging navigation stress, fixing one step in one pathway, and aligning the story from board paper to waiting room, and invites organisations to work with Hyphae Network on practical navigation and mentoring systems that hold under pressure.