Our role in Support at Home
The Support at Home program helps older people live independently at home, or a location of their choosing, for longer. The Support at Home service list specifies the range of the government funded care and services can access under the program.
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.
As part of the Australian Government’s aged care reforms, our role is to provide pricing advice for services on the service list to the Minister for Health and Ageing. The government is responsible for determining price caps for in home aged care services and the timing of announcement for prices for services on the Support at Home service list.
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 include all in-scope costs associated with delivering the service such as labour, transport, consumables and administration.
The Aged Care Act includes changes to in-home aged care and from 1 November 2025 replaced the Short-Term Restorative Care Programme and Home Care Packages Program with a single program called Support at Home. The Commonwealth Home Support Programme will transition to the Support at Home program no earlier than 1 July 2027. The first Support at Home pricing advice was provided to government in February 2025. This advice is under consideration by government.
Aged care pricing roles and responsibilities
IHACPA's role is to develop aged care pricing and costing advice. This includes:
- undertaking cost collections and public consultations, and analysing data and stakeholder feedback.
- developing the pricing framework and pricing advice that we provide to government.
The Australian Government's role is to set aged care pricing. This includes:
- determining and announcing the prices, which is done by the Minister for Health and Aged Care.
- supporting program implementation and policy settings, which is done by the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing.
Our pricing advice process
IHACPA:
- conducts annual public consultation on the Pricing Approach for the Support at Home service list
- collects and analyses cost and activity data by undertaking annual cost collections
- provides pricing advice for the Support at Home service list to the Australian Government.
The Australian Government:
- determines and announces the prices for services on the Support at Home service list.
IHACPA:
- publishes the Support at Home Pricing Advice and the pricing framework following agreement from the minister.
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.