HHS began its operations in 1949 as the Emergency Housekeeper Service and was administered by the National Council of Women until 1977 when the ACT division of the Australian Red Cross Society was invited to take over its administration. Upon the Territory becoming self governed in 1989 HHS adopted its own Constitution, became an incorporated entity and functions in this format today.

It became evident that HHS was growing into a multi-million dollar organisation and to be sustainable into the future a management restructure was put in place that would enable the organisation to become more effective and efficient in the way that it managed its resources.

On 1 July 2007 Handyhelp ACT Inc. and its programmes were assimilated under the HHS umbrella. The reason for this was to enable a more holistic approach to client care, a more flexible range of quality service options, the ability to keep client co-contribution costs to a minimum and to provide a long term vision for ongoing “in home support care”.

The service has continued to grow in leaps and bounds. There are over 160 hardworking Support Carers’, Handy people, and EMC (Episodic Major Clean) Support Carers’ who are the eyes and ears of the organisation, and a team of over 30 hardworking and multi-skilled office staff.

At HHS the Board of Directors and CEO have a modern strategic approach to running a not-for-profit organisation that will see the service well placed to meet the needs of the ACT community into the future. This is achieved by combining strong business acumen with the empathy required to run a community organisation.