In-home aged care
Notice:
On 12 September 2024, the Australian Government introduced the Aged Care Bill 2024 to Parliament. Once passed into law, the Aged Care Bill 2024 will become the Aged Care Act and deliver major aged care reform including a new Support at Home program.
For more information, view the Support at Home program fact sheet or sign up to an upcoming webinar to learn more.
The Australian Government is reforming in-home aged care services to assist older people in living independently at home for longer. Following the final report of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety, government has announced reforms to in-home aged care transitioning the existing Home Care Package (HCP) program, Commonwealth Home Support Programme (CHSP) and Short-Term Restorative Care Programme (STRC) into a single in-home aged care program.
On 12 September 2024, government introduced the Aged Care Bill 2024 to Parliament. Once passed into law, the Aged Care Bill 2024 will become the Aged Care Act and deliver major aged care reform, including a new Support at Home program.
The Support at Home program will be implemented using a phased approach:
- Phase 1: HCP and STRC programs transition to Support at Home from 1 July 2025
- Phase 2: CHSP transitions to Support at Home no earlier than 1 July 2027.
Our role in the Support at Home program
The Support at Home program will have a defined service list that will outline the care and services available to older people. As part of government’s aged care reforms, our role is to provide pricing advice for the service list to the Minister for Health and Aged Care, who then sets the price for aged care services.
In providing evidence-based advice to government, we undertake cost collections to gain a greater understanding of the resources used to deliver aged care services and how much they cost.
Prices for services on the Support at Home service list will include all in-scope costs associated with delivering the service such as labour, transport, consumables and administration.
Our role in providing independent aged care pricing advice for the Support at Home program aims to ensure aged care funding is directly informed by the actual cost of delivering in-home aged care services.
Current in-home aged care programs will continue to operate under existing arrangements until they transition into the Support at Home program.
The first Support at Home pricing advice will be provided to government in February 2025 for program implementation from 1 July 2025.
Current and upcoming activities
In 2024, there will be opportunities to have your say and participate in the development of our pricing advice for 2025. Subscribe to our mailing list to stay up to date about upcoming activities.
- On 23 September 2024 we held our first public consultation seeking feedback on our pricing approach for in-home aged care services. Your input means that our pricing advice can meet the needs of the aged care sector to reflect the cost of delivering aged care services.
- In February 2025 we will provide our first Support at Home pricing advice to government, to be implemented from 1 July 2025.
Additional resources
- Consultation Paper on the Pricing Approach for the Support at Home Service List 2025–26 (PDF format)
- Consultation Paper on the Pricing Approach for the Support at Home Service List 2025–26 (HTML format)
- IHACPA aged care cost collections
- IHACPA Support at Home pricing fact sheet
- IHACPA Support at Home pricing FAQs
- Department of Health and Aged Care Support at Home fact sheet and webinars