The new landscape
On 1 November 2025, Home Care Packages were replaced by a new program called Support at Home. The goal is the same – government-funded help so people can keep living in their own home – but the way the funding works is different, and clearer in a lot of ways.
This guide walks you through it in plain language: how the funding is worked out, what it covers, what you might actually pay, and how to get started. (If you’re at an earlier stage and still weighing up whether help is needed at all, our guide to the early signs is a gentler place to begin.)
What replaced Home Care Packages
The old system had four package levels. Support at Home replaces those with eight classification levels, so funding is matched much more closely to what each person actually needs, rather than rounded to the nearest of four steps.
The shape of it is simple:
- An assessor looks at how your loved one is managing day to day.
- Based on that, they’re assigned one of eight classifications.
- Each classification comes with a set budget to spend on approved services.
Annual funding runs from around $11,000 at the lowest classification to roughly $78,000 at the highest. These amounts are indexed each July, so it’s always worth confirming the current figure – but that range gives you a sense of the scale. The budget is released in quarterly instalments across the year rather than all at once, and a small portion of each (up to 10%) covers care management, which is the work of coordinating and reviewing the care itself. If some of a quarter’s budget goes unused, a small amount can roll over to the next.
The three types of support – and this is the part that matters for cost
Every service under Support at Home falls into one of three groups, and the group it’s in decides how much, if anything, you contribute towards it.
Clinical care
Nursing, wound care and allied health such as physiotherapy and occupational therapy sit here. The important thing to know: clinical care is fully funded by the government, for everyone, regardless of income. Nobody contributes to it.
Independence support
This covers personal care and the everyday support that helps someone stay independent – help with showering and dressing, social support, and things like assistive technology and home modifications. You contribute a moderate share of these, based on your means.
Everyday living
The domestic and lifestyle supports – cleaning, gardening, meal preparation, transport. These carry the highest contribution.
So the money question isn’t one big scary number. It’s really just: how much do you contribute to the second and third groups?
What you’ll actually pay
Clinical care is free. For the other two groups, what you contribute depends on your income and assets, and on your pension status.
To give you a feel for it, a full pensioner pays nothing for clinical care, around 5% of the cost of independence services, and around 17.5% of everyday living services. So for every $100 of cleaning, that’s about $17.50 to you and the rest covered by the government. Part pensioners and Commonwealth Seniors Health Card holders pay somewhere in between, and self-funded retirees pay more. The exact percentages come out of an income and assets assessment, and My Aged Care has a free fee estimator you can use to get a personalised figure.
Two things are worth holding onto here. First, there’s a lifetime cap – currently around $135,000, indexed twice a year – on the total anyone can ever be asked to contribute, so costs can’t quietly run away over many years. And from 1 October 2026, personal care becomes fully government-funded as well, which lowers out-of-pocket costs further for a lot of families.
Equipment and home modifications are funded separately
If your loved one needs something like a walking frame, a shower chair, grab rails or a bathroom modification, these are funded through a separate assistive technology and home modifications scheme – not out of the quarterly budget. That means arranging a safety rail doesn’t eat into the funding you’re using for weekly help. It’s worth raising these needs early so they’re assessed and funded in their own right.
How to get started
The way in is a free assessment, which you arrange through My Aged Care. It’s a straightforward conversation about how your loved one is managing and where support would help, and it puts you under no obligation.
Once an assessment is done and a classification is approved, you choose a registered provider to deliver the services and agree a plan together. If you’d like to see what that looks like step by step, here’s how the process works – and when you get to comparing providers, this guide covers what to look for.
If you’re already on a Home Care Package
If your loved one was already receiving a Home Care Package, there’s no need to reapply and nothing to lose sleep over. Existing recipients were moved across to Support at Home automatically, and a “no worse off” principle means people who transitioned won’t pay more than they did under the old system, and often pay less. Any unspent package funds were carried over too.
Frequently asked questions
- What happened to Home Care Packages? They were replaced by the Support at Home program on 1 November 2025. Support at Home does the same essential job – funding help at home – using eight classification levels instead of the old four package levels.
- Is clinical care really free? Yes. Nursing and allied health are fully funded by the government under Support at Home, with no contribution from you, whatever your income.
- How much funding will we get? It depends on the assessed classification, from around $11,000 to roughly $78,000 a year. The assessment is what determines where someone lands, so it’s the assessment, not a guess, that sets the figure.
- What will we have to pay? Only towards independence and everyday living services, at a percentage based on income and assets. A full pensioner pays roughly 5% and 17.5% of those two groups; higher-means households pay more. My Aged Care’s fee estimator gives a personalised number.
- Can the funding pay for equipment or home modifications? Yes, through a separate scheme, so it doesn’t reduce the regular quarterly budget.
- We’re already on a package – do we need to do anything? No. Existing recipients transitioned automatically, kept any unspent funds, and are protected from paying more under the “no worse off” principle.
A clearer system, and help to make sense of it
The move to Support at Home has made in-home funding fairer and, once you get past the new names, simpler. But we know it can still feel like a lot to take in.
If you’d like to understand how it applies to your family – roughly which classification might fit, or what you’d be likely to pay – we’re happy to talk it through, with no pressure. You can also see how we handle pricing and find more answers on our FAQ and resources page.
