Support at Home in plain English

Support at Home is the Australian Government program that pays for help at home for older people. It started on 1 November 2025 and replaced Home Care Packages. If someone you love has been “on a package”, they are now on Support at Home.

The idea is simple. The government gives each person a budget, a registered provider looks after it, and the money pays for the help they’ve been assessed as needing. In practice it’s harder than that, mostly because of the words. This guide translates them.

Who can get it

Generally, people aged 65 or over who need help to keep living at home. The age is 50 or over for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and for people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. Everyone starts in the same place: an assessment arranged through My Aged Care, on 1800 200 422 or at myagedcare.gov.au.

An assessor visits, asks a lot of questions, and decides what services you’re approved for and which classification you get. You’ll receive a letter. Keep it, because almost everything else flows from it.

The eight classifications

Your classification sets your quarterly budget. Level 1 is the least help, level 8 the most. These are the amounts current at 1 July 2026. They go up a little each July.

Classification	Per quarter	Per year
1	$2,752.50	$11,010.01
2	$4,112.84	$16,451.35
3	$5,634.20	$22,536.81
4	$7,617.13	$30,468.51
5	$10,182.38	$40,729.53
6	$12,341.32	$49,365.27
7	$14,915.00	$59,660.00
8	$20,034.28	$80,137.12

There can be a wait between being assessed and the funding starting. People who were already on a Home Care Package when the system changed may have different, “transitioned” amounts.

Where the money goes first

Ten per cent of every quarterly budget goes straight to your provider for care management: planning your care, checking in, and sorting problems. That happens whether you use a lot of their help or very little. The provider has to deliver at least one direct care management activity each month.

What’s left pays for the actual services. Each service has a price, and the provider takes that price out of your budget. Prices are set by providers. The government planned to cap them from 1 July 2026 but has put that off, so prices vary a lot from one provider to the next. That’s why the hourly rate matters so much: our budget tool shows how many hours a quarter different rates buy.

If you don’t spend it all, you can carry some over into the next quarter: up to $1,000 or 10% of your quarterly budget, whichever is more. The rest is gone. Money left sitting unused is care that never happened.

What it pays for

Services fall into three groups, and the group decides what you contribute.

Clinical supports are things like nursing, physiotherapy and occupational therapy. Independence covers personal care, social support, respite and transport. Everyday living covers cleaning, laundry, shopping help, gardening, home maintenance and meals.

The official service list says what fits where, and also what’s not covered, such as the cost of a ticket to an outing or professional services you’d normally pay for yourself.

There’s separate, short-term funding too. The Assistive Technology and Home Modifications scheme pays for equipment and changes to the house, in tiers of $500, $2,000 or $15,000 (more in some cases). The Restorative Care Pathway gives around $6,000 for up to 16 weeks to help someone get back on their feet, and the End-of-Life Pathway gives around $25,000 over 12 weeks.

What you might pay

Most people pay a contribution: a share of the price of each service. It depends on the type of service and on your pension or income.

You are on	Clinical	Independence	Everyday living
Full pension	0%	5%	17.5%
Part pension, or a Commonwealth Seniors Health Card	0%	5% to 50%	17.5% to 80%
Self-funded, no card	0%	50%	80%

So if a full pensioner has an hour of cleaning priced at $80, the budget covers $66 and they pay $14. Clinical care is always free to you. There’s also a lifetime cap on what you contribute: $130,000, shared with residential aged care.

Those rates are for people who joined Support at Home after it began. If you were already on a Home Care Package, on the waiting list, or approved for one by 12 September 2024, a “no worse off” rule applies instead: you pay what you paid before, or less. If you weren’t paying an income-tested care fee on your package, you’ll never be asked to contribute, which is why a full pensioner in this group usually pays nothing. The official contributions page has the detail.

If you had unspent package money when Home Care Packages ended on 31 October 2025, it wasn’t lost. It moved across into a separate home care account that has no carryover limit and goes with you if you change providers. It can pay for equipment and home changes, or for services once your quarterly budget runs out. My Aged Care explains how it works.

What to do next

If nobody has been assessed yet, call My Aged Care. If you have a letter with a classification, the next jobs are choosing a provider, agreeing on prices, and deciding how much you want to manage yourselves. Our guide to self-management explains what you’re allowed to do and what the provider still has to do.

If you’d rather someone walked you through it, Colin can help. Ask whether your provider can fund this help.