If you have been looking into home care for a parent, or for yourself, you have probably read a lot of pages about Home Care Packages. Most of them are now out of date.
Home Care Packages ended on 1 November 2025. The program that replaced them is called Support at Home. If you already had a package you did not lose anything, but almost everything about how the money is described has changed, and it is worth understanding before you spend any of it.
What actually changed
Under the old scheme there were four package levels. Support at Home has eight classifications, plus two separate short pathways — one for restorative care after an illness or a fall, and one for end-of-life care. Each classification carries an annual amount, released as a budget through the year rather than accumulating in a pool.
The bigger change is how services are grouped. Everything you might buy now falls into one of three categories, and they are funded differently:
- Clinical supports — nursing, wound care, medication management, continence assessment. The government pays the full cost. You contribute nothing.
- Independence services — personal care, help with medication, getting to appointments, keeping on top of your own affairs. You contribute a share.
- Everyday living services — cleaning, laundry, shopping, meal preparation. You contribute a larger share.
Your actual contribution rate is set by Services Australia, from your pension status and your income and assets assessment — not by your provider. Two people with the same classification can pay quite different amounts.
If you already had a package
You were moved across automatically, on no worse off arrangements: your contribution terms cannot be worse than they were under your old package, and funds you had accrued came with you. Our fee schedule still lists the four transitioned package levels alongside the eight new classifications for exactly this reason.
If you have never been assessed, the way in is My Aged Care — an assessment, then a classification. It is not quick, which is worth knowing early.
Where budgets get wasted
This part has not changed at all, and it is still the thing that decides how far your funding goes.
Home care is billed by time, and time includes getting there. If your provider drives across the city to you, a share of every visit pays for the drive rather than for the care. Tasks with dead time in the middle waste more of it — someone loads the washing machine, and then either waits or leaves and comes back, and both are billed.
Care management takes a set share of your budget as well. Ours is ten per cent, which is the common arrangement; what differs between providers is what you get for it.
Why it goes further here
At The Henley, the care staff are already in the building.
There is no travel time to pay for, because nobody travels. A ten-minute job is booked as ten minutes rather than as the half-hour that a visit across town has to be. Someone can start the washing, do something else in the same building, and come back — without a second trip appearing on your statement. Over a year the difference is not small.
Social activities are part of the weekly fee for living here, so none of your budget goes on simply having a life. And because there are staff on site through the day and a registered nurse in the building, the help that would otherwise mean an unplanned visit — or an ambulance — is a few minutes away.
What you do with what you save is up to you. Some people buy more of the care they actually want; some buy a piece of equipment that makes a real difference; some let it accrue for a year when they will need it more.
Worth checking rather than assuming
Two things depend on your own circumstances, and we would rather you checked them than took our word for it:
- What you will contribute. That is Services Australia’s assessment, not ours.
- What happens to your funding if you move into our private aged care household. The Henley Private Aged Care is a private household, not a government-subsidised residential aged care home, and that distinction is what determines how your Support at Home funding is treated. Ask us, and ask My Aged Care, before you rely on it either way.
The current rates for every service, and the contribution bands for each category, are in our schedule of fees.
For the program itself — assessments, classifications and how contributions are worked out — the authority is myagedcare.gov.au or 1800 200 422.
If you would rather just talk it through with someone who does this every day, get in touch or read about support in your own apartment.