The Support at Home Program Explained: A Plain-English Guide for Families

What is Support at Home?

Support at Home is the Australian Government's program for aged care delivered in your own home. It started on 1 November 2025 and replaced two older programs: the Home Care Packages Program and the Short-Term Restorative Care Programme. If you have been told to "look into home care" for a parent or partner, Support at Home is now the program you are looking into.

The idea is the same as it was under Home Care Packages. You have an assessment, you are approved for a level of funding that matches your needs, and you choose a registered provider to deliver services such as nursing, personal care, cleaning, transport and home modifications. What changed is the detail: more funding levels, quarterly budgets, a different way of charging contributions, and new short-term pathways for people recovering from illness or approaching the end of life.

This guide is the starting point. Each section links to a deeper page on that topic.

Who is Support at Home for?

Support at Home is for older Australians who need help to keep living safely at home. In practice that means people aged 65 and over (50 and over for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people) whose needs go beyond what the entry-level Commonwealth Home Support Programme (CHSP) provides.

The CHSP has not been folded into Support at Home yet. It continues as a separate program and the government has committed to moving it across no earlier than 1 July 2027. If someone is currently receiving a few hours of CHSP help a week, nothing changes for them for now.

The eight funding levels

Home Care Packages had four levels. Support at Home has eight ongoing classifications, so funding can be matched more closely to what an assessment finds. Budgets are set per quarter and already include a 10% allocation for care management.

Classification	Quarterly budget	Annual equivalent
1	$2,752.50	$11,010
2	$4,112.84	$16,451
3	$5,634.20	$22,537
4	$7,617.13	$30,469
5	$10,182.38	$40,730
6	$12,341.32	$49,365
7	$14,915.00	$59,660
8	$20,034.28	$80,137

The top classification is worth roughly $80,000 a year, well above the old Level 4 package. Read the full breakdown, including what each level typically covers and the special transitioned levels for former package holders, in Support at Home funding levels explained.

Three short-term pathways

Alongside the ongoing classifications there are three time-limited pathways:

• Restorative Care Pathway - intensive allied health and nursing for up to 16 weeks to regain function after a setback, with a funding unit of around $6,000 (up to $12,000 where a second unit is approved).
• End-of-Life Pathway - $25,000 over 12 weeks (usable across 16 weeks) for people with a prognosis of three months or less who want to stay at home.
• Assistive Technology and Home Modifications (AT-HM) scheme - separate funding for equipment and home changes in low (under $500), medium (up to $2,000) and high (up to $15,000) tiers, so these no longer eat into your ongoing budget.

The services list guide covers what each pathway funds and what is excluded.

What you will pay

This is where Support at Home differs most from the old system. Instead of a basic daily fee and an income-tested care fee, you pay a percentage of the price of each service you actually receive, and the percentage depends on the type of service:

• Clinical care (nursing, physiotherapy, occupational therapy) - free for everyone.
• Independence services (personal care, social support, respite, some allied health) - full pensioners pay 5%; part pensioners and Commonwealth Seniors Health Card holders pay between 5% and 50% depending on means; self-funded retirees without a card pay 50%.
• Everyday living services (cleaning, gardening, meals, transport) - full pensioners pay 17.5%; part pensioners and card holders pay 17.5% to 80%; self-funded retirees without a card pay 80%.

Two protections matter. First, from 1 October 2026 personal care moves into the clinical category, so help with showering, dressing and mobility becomes free for everyone. Second, there is a lifetime cap on contributions ($135,318.69 as at 20 September 2025, indexed twice a year), after which the government pays for everything.

Worked examples for a full pensioner, a part pensioner and a self-funded retiree are in Support at Home costs and contributions.

How to apply

1. Register with My Aged Care - call 1800 200 422 or apply at myagedcare.gov.au. A family member can do this on your behalf as a representative.
2. Have an aged care needs assessment - an assessor visits or calls to discuss health, daily living and support at home. The national median wait from referral to assessment was 25 days in the March 2026 quarter.
3. Receive your outcome - the assessment decides eligibility, your classification (or pathway) and a priority category that determines how long you wait for funding.
4. Choose a provider - once funding is allocated, you pick a registered provider and agree a service plan with them before services start. You can line this up while you wait.

The wait between approval and funded services is the part families underestimate. In mid-2026 My Aged Care listed estimated waits of under a month for urgent cases but 5 to 8 months for medium and standard priority. How to apply for Support at Home explains the priority categories and what you can do while you wait.

If you already had a Home Care Package

People who held a Home Care Package on 31 October 2025 were moved into Support at Home automatically. Three things protect you:

• You were placed in a transitioned classification with equivalent funding to your old package level.
• Your unspent package funds carried across in full, with no cap and no expiry date.
• The no worse off principle means your contributions cannot be higher than they would have been under the old package rules. If you were a full pensioner paying nothing, you keep paying nothing.

The same protection applies to anyone who was approved for a package and on the waiting list at 12 September 2024. Details are in moving from a Home Care Package to Support at Home. If you are researching the old system, our Home Care Packages guide explains what they were and how they map across.

Choosing a Support at Home provider

You have full choice of registered provider and you can switch if it is not working out. Because contributions are now charged as a percentage of each service's price, the provider's price list directly affects what you pay. Comparing price lists, care management charges and worker consistency matters more than it did under Home Care Packages. See how to choose a Support at Home provider for the questions to ask.

You can browse every registered in-home aged care provider in Australia, by state and suburb, in the AusCareGuide aged care directory. If you would rather have someone compare options for you, our free placement help service does exactly that.

Figures on this page are current as at August 2026. Support at Home budgets, contribution caps and pathway amounts are indexed on 20 March and 20 September each year, so always confirm the latest amounts with My Aged Care before making decisions. This guide is general information, not financial or legal advice.