The New Act for Home Care Providers

Analysis

13 Sept

3 minute read

A window of opportunity

Yesterday the government finally tabled the new Aged Care Act including its response to the Taskforce Report. While it may seem churlish, we find it difficult to congratulate a government for taking years to deliver long overdue reforms.

And it’s important to remember we are not quite there yet, despite ‘bipartisan support’ for the Act, it is clear the Opposition is leaving itself wiggle room to call for more changes during the consultation process ahead. Before anyone pops the champagne corks, we also need to process what’s in over 500 pages of legislation and a bunch of new policy announcements that got smuggled in with the Act.

We can already see amongst a range of mostly unsurprising developments there is some real devil in the new detail, including Care Management fees capped at a very low 10% of an individual’s budget. No-one who understands the importance of Care Management would think this is a reasonable level of funding for the central component of the home care system.

We will dive deep into the legislation and do a more considered article early next week. In the meantime, here are the headlines for Home Care providers, starting with the new developments and progressing to the already known announcements:

Support at Home begins 1 July 2025 with $4.3B funding over 10 years

A new 8 level classification system for ongoing home care
Plus 2 short term care levels:

A 12-week short-term restorative classification with access expanded
An end-of-life classification set at $25,000 for up to 12 weeks.

The highest payment for ongoing care to increase to $78,000
Care management fees to be capped at 10% of individual’s budget
Three types of ‘defined services’ - clinical care, independence and everyday living
Funding to reduce waiting times to 3 months over the next two years
Quarterly individual budgets, a maximum of 10% allowed to be carried over
Providers to claim in arrears and paid no more than an IHACPA set limit
New Assistive Tech and Home Mods Scheme with home mods of up to $15,000
Some grants available in remote areas or for special needs groups
Means tested participant co-contributions according to type of service provided
A lifetime cap of $130,000 in contributions
Existing HCP clients not to pay any of the new fees

And the not-so new…

A new registration process for providers
A statement of rights of older people in aged care services
A single assessment system
New provider obligations
Strengthened Aged Care Quality Standards
New powers for the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission
New civil penalties for providers, workers and key personnel
New pathways for complaints
Home Care Packages and Short-Term Restorative Care begin mid 2025
CHSP bringing up the tail, still mid 2027 at the earliest.

We’ve waited so long it would be easy to feel over it and just sit back and now wait and see what happens with the passage of the legislation. But, we cannot afford to relax with issues like the Care Management fee cap. If this unreasonable pricing proposal becomes a reality, it’s really going to hurt providers and significantly lower the standard of care people receive at home.

The next nine months will set in place approaches that are going to be much harder to change when they become DOHAC and ACQSC practice. This is a real window of opportunity to visit a politician and work through ACCPA to advocate to change the things we know they are getting wrong.

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Roland Naufal

Roland has built (and at times threatened) his career by being outspoken about things that matter. He has over three decades of experience – from aged care CEO and Age Friendly Cities expert to the founder of DSC, Australia’s best known NDIS educators. This led him to ask the question: if radical honesty worked for Australia’s disability sector, then why not aged care, too? And here we are, folks.

Paul Sadler

Few people have as much experience in the aged care sector as Paul. 35 years, to be exact. He’s been a national and state CEO of aged care industry associations, CEO of a major aged care provider, and influencer of ageing policy, disability and community care programs for both national and state governments. He actually enjoys staying on top of the detail and is always ready to share his wisdom and insights (which comes in kind of handy).