In-home aged care
Notice:
The new Aged Care Act will start from 1 November 2025 and will 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.
In response to the recommendations of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety, the Aged Care Bill 2024 was introduced and passed by Parliament on 25 November 2024. The Aged Care Act 2024 (Cth) (Aged Care Act) will come into effect from 1 November 2025.
The Aged Care Act includes reforms to in-home aged care and transitions the existing Short-Term Restorative Care (STRC) Programme, Home Care Packages (HCP) Program, and Commonwealth Home Support Programme (CHSP) into a single in-home aged care program called the Support at Home program.
The Support at Home program will help older people live independently at home, or a location of their choosing, for longer. It will fund in-home aged care services, based on the actual cost of delivering high quality care and services, through government subsidies for a range of short term and ongoing in-home aged care services and supports.
The Support at Home service list specifies the range of government funded services participants can access under the Support at Home program. The Support at Home service list is available on the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing website.
The Support at Home program will be delivered in 2 stages, to minimise disruption and ensure continuity of care for older people:
- the HCP and STRC programs will transition to the Support at Home program, from 1 November 2025
- the CHSP will transition to the Support at Home program, 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 Ageing, 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 was provided to government in February 2025.
Current and upcoming activities
There are opportunities to have your say and participate in the development of our pricing advice each year. Subscribe to our mailing list to stay up to date about upcoming activities.
Additional resources
- Consultation Paper on the Pricing Framework for Australian Support at Home Aged Care Services 2026–27 (PDF format)
- Consultation Paper on the Pricing Framework for Australian Support at Home Aged Care Services 2026–27 (HTML format)
- IHACPA aged care cost collections
- IHACPA Support at Home pricing fact sheet
- IHACPA Support at Home pricing FAQs
- Department of Health, Disability and Ageing Support at Home fact sheet and webinars