Bringing parents to Australia to help with confinement

For a great many families in Australia, the confinement plan is not a service at all. It is a person: a mother or mother-in-law who flies in, takes over the kitchen, and does what her own generation did. That is the arrangement the tradition assumes, and the thing standing between you and it is usually a visa.

This is an overview of the options and, more importantly, the timing. Immigration rules and charges change, so treat everything here as a starting point and confirm the current position on the Department of Home Affairs website before you rely on it. For anything complicated, a registered migration agent is worth the fee.

The three routes families use

Visitor visa, subclass 600, tourist stream

The ordinary visitor visa, and for a single confinement month usually the straightforward answer. No sponsor is required, the application is comparatively cheap, and stays are commonly granted for three, six or twelve months per entry at the decision-maker’s discretion.

The important detail is that the stay period is decided case by case, so what matters is the grant notice, not the general guidance. Visitors cannot work, and helping their own family at home is not work.

Best for: one visit covering the month and a settling-in period afterwards.

Visitor visa, sponsored family stream

The same visa class, but sponsored by a relative in Australia. Stays are typically around three months, though longer is possible in some circumstances. Because there is an approved sponsor standing behind the application, it can help where a straightforward tourist application might be refused, and a security bond is sometimes required.

Best for: cases where a plain visitor application is likely to be knocked back.

Sponsored Parent (Temporary) visa, subclass 870

The long option. Designed for parents of Australian citizens, permanent residents and eligible New Zealand citizens, it allows a stay of three or five years, with a cumulative maximum of ten years across applications.

The details matter here:

• Two stages. The sponsor must apply and be approved first; only then can the parent lodge the visa application. This is what makes it slow.
• No work rights. The visa does not permit working in Australia.
• Private health insurance from an Australian provider must be held and maintained throughout.
• Cost. Substantial: the visa application charge runs to several thousand dollars for three years and roughly double for five, plus the sponsorship fee, medicals and police checks.
• Temporary only. It does not lead to permanent residency.

Best for: families who want a grandparent present well beyond the month, and who can absorb the cost and the lead time.

The timing, which is the real problem

Almost every family that struggles with this struggles for the same reason: they started in the third trimester.

Processing times vary widely by country, visa type and time of year, and the sponsored routes have that two-stage structure where the sponsorship approval must land before the visa application even begins. Add medicals, police checks and document gathering, and months disappear quickly.

Put this in the second trimester, alongside booking a nanny, as our confinement planning timeline sets out. Check the current processing times for the relevant country before you commit to a plan that depends on someone arriving.

Practical things worth thinking about

Have a fallback. Visas are refused and flights are missed. If your entire confinement plan rests on one person arriving, arrange a backup, whether that is meal delivery you can start at short notice or a nanny agency you have already spoken to. Our guide to choosing your confinement support covers the alternatives.

Health cover. Visitors are not covered by Medicare, and travel or visitor health insurance is worth having regardless of whether the visa requires it.

Arrival timing. Landing a week or two before the due date gives time to recover from the flight, find the shops and settle in. Arriving the day after the birth means a jet-lagged helper in the hardest week.

Talk about the month in advance. A grandmother arriving with firm views about how confinement should be done, meeting a couple with their own, is one of the most common sources of friction. Our editorial on the emotional side of confinement and the guide to how much rest is expected are useful to read together, before anyone gets on a plane.

Feed them too. The person who came to cook also needs looking after. Our 30-day meal plan makes the month legible for whoever is running the kitchen, especially if they are cooking in an unfamiliar country with different ingredients. Where to find those ingredients is covered in where to buy confinement ingredients in Australia.