Where do you even begin? You put in an urgent request for Mum. You called My Aged Care. They put you through to an assessment service, who told you they would "put in a request to have it urgently requested". And then nothing. No number. No date. No next step.
You are not imagining it. This part of the system really is a maze, and nobody hands you a map.
Here is the honest answer up front, including the bit you might not want to hear. There is no single button that jumps the queue. Following up an aged care assessment is mostly about knowing who is holding the request right now, calling that service directly, and having the reference number ready so nobody starts from scratch. What you can do is make sure the request is not sitting in a gap between two services, because hand-offs between agencies are where these things stall.
The good news is that there are published timeframes, and you are allowed to hold people to them. Let's walk through it plainly.
- Work out who is holding the request right now
- Get the reference number, and get yourself registered as a supporter
- The timeframes you can hold them to
- "Urgent" is a real category, and it is set at triage
- What the assessment is actually for, and how to prepare
- Approval and funding are two different steps
- Support at Home, the classifications, and what you would contribute
- Changing providers
- What you can ask for while you wait
- You don't have to work this out alone
1. Work out who is holding the request right now
The reason you feel like you are being passed around is that the job genuinely is split.
My Aged Care is the front door. It is the federal service you call first, on 1800 200 422, or apply through at myagedcare.gov.au. It takes the request and refers it onwards. It does not do the assessment.
An assessment organisation does the assessment. Since 9 December 2024 all aged care needs assessments are carried out by assessment organisations under the Single Assessment System. This replaced the old Aged Care Assessment Teams (ACATs) and the Regional Assessment Service. Some of those organisations are run by state health services, which is why a call about aged care can end up being answered by your state's health department. If someone still says "ACAT" to you, they mean an aged care needs assessor.
So when you follow up, the question is: who is holding it right now? If My Aged Care has already referred Mum on, only the assessment organisation can tell you where it is at. If you are not sure the referral has even been made, that is a My Aged Care question.
You are allowed to ask, in plain words: "Who has my request right now, and what is their direct number?" That one question saves you the merry-go-round.
2. Get the reference number, and get yourself registered as a supporter
Two pieces of admin do more work than anything else here.
Mum's My Aged Care reference number. Every request creates a record. Ask for the number and write it down somewhere you will not lose it. Quoting it at the start of a call means the person pulls up the file instead of taking your story from the top for the fourth time.
Register yourself as her supporter. This is the one most families miss. If you want to speak to My Aged Care and the assessment organisation on Mum's behalf, and be told what is happening, you need to be registered as her registered supporter. Without it, there is a limit to what anyone can tell you, no matter how reasonable your question is. You can set this up by calling My Aged Care on 1800 200 422, or the assessor can register you during the assessment itself. A registered supporter can help make and communicate decisions, and can talk to My Aged Care, assessors and providers.
Get the name of the specific team. "An assessment service" is not enough to chase. A named organisation and a direct number is.
Keep a running note. Date, who you spoke to, what they said, what happens next. It feels fussy, but it turns "I called a few weeks ago and someone mentioned urgent" into "On the 3rd, your team told me the referral had been triaged as urgent." That is a much stronger position to follow up from.
You are entitled to know the reference number and where the request sits. Nobody is doing you a favour by telling you.
3. The timeframes you can hold them to
You will be told that wait times vary, and they do. But there are published timeframes, and knowing them turns a vague chase into a specific one.
- Triage: within 3 calendar days of the referral being issued. Every accepted referral is triaged before the assessment, usually by phone. People at higher risk should be triaged faster.
- First contact about the assessment: within 2 to 6 weeks. The assessment organisation calls Mum, her primary contact or her registered supporter to confirm her needs and arrange a time.
- The assessment itself: usually within 5 to 40 calendar days of triage, depending on the assessment type and the priority assigned.
- The outcome letter: if you have not heard anything 2 weeks after the assessment, My Aged Care's own advice is to call the assessment organisation.
You can also check progress yourself in the My Aged Care Online Account, which shows the status of applications and assessments.
If you are outside one of these windows, say so on the call. "The referral was issued on the 2nd and we have not been triaged yet" is a much harder thing for a service to leave sitting than "I'm just checking in."
4. "Urgent" is a real category, and it is set at triage
It is, but there are two separate priority decisions and they get muddled constantly.
Priority for the assessment is confirmed at triage. At the end of that call the triage delegate confirms Mum's eligibility, the type of assessment she needs, the priority of that assessment, and whether she needs urgent services or other supports in the meantime. A team leader at the assessment organisation can review a referral and change its priority.
Priority for funding comes later, and is set by the assessment itself. There are four categories in the Support at Home Priority System: urgent, high, medium and standard.
So the useful question is not "is it urgent", it is: "Has triage happened, and what priority was recorded?" You may not get a date, but you can get confirmation that the urgency was recorded rather than just discussed.
If her situation has changed, tell them. Priority follows need. A fall, a hospital discharge, a carer who is no longer available, a decline since the request went in: all of it is relevant new information, and a request submitted three weeks ago does not know about it unless someone updates the record. Call My Aged Care or the assessment organisation and say what has changed.
If you are stuck in a genuine loop, with each service pointing at the other, it is fair to ask one of them to confirm on the call that the referral actually issued and was accepted, rather than left incomplete.
5. What the assessment is actually for, and how to prepare
It helps to know why you are chasing this, because it makes the wait feel less like bureaucracy for its own sake. The assessment decides what Mum is eligible for and what her funding will be, so everything else genuinely is waiting behind it.
It is a conversation, not a test. An aged care needs assessor visits Mum at home and talks with her about how she is managing: cooking, showering, getting around, whether she is safe on her own, what a normal day looks like. Assessors can be clinical or non-clinical, so do not be thrown if the person who arrives is not a nurse.
A little prep goes a long way. Have Mum's Medicare card, a list of her medications, the names of her GP and any current services, and a few honest notes about where she is struggling.
Be in the room. If Mum is likely to play things down, and many people do, you being there helps the assessor see the full picture. You can also be registered as her supporter during the visit if you have not done it already.
What comes out of it. The assessor works with Mum to build a support plan setting out her goals and the services she is approved for. She then receives a Notice of Decision letter, titled "Outcome of your application for funded aged care services", with the support plan attached. Worth knowing: the support plan governs which services she can actually access, so if something she needs is not on it, that is the thing to raise at the visit rather than afterwards.
6. Approval and funding are two different steps
This is the step almost every explanation skips, and it is the one that catches families out.
Being approved does not mean funding has been allocated. If Mum is approved for ongoing Support at Home funding and is actively seeking services, she joins the Support at Home Priority System and waits for funding to become available. Allocation is based on her approval date and her priority category.
As at 30 June 2026, the indicative waits were:
- Urgent: full funding allocated within 1 month
- High: around 1 month
- Medium: around 5 to 6 months
- Standard: around 7 to 8 months
When funding is available, Mum receives a funding allocation letter. That letter starts a clock: she has 56 days from it to enter a service agreement with a provider and start services, with a 28-day extension available on request through My Aged Care. Miss it and the funding is withdrawn and she rejoins the priority system rather than resuming her place.
So the full sequence is: register, triage, assessment, Notice of Decision, wait for funding allocation, choose a provider, service agreement, services begin.
Two exceptions worth knowing. Funding for the Restorative Care Pathway and the End-of-Life Pathway is available immediately on approval. And assistive technology and home modifications run through their own separate priority systems, which is why that funding often lands before the ongoing budget does.
7. Support at Home, the classifications, and what you would contribute
Support at Home is the current program for care at home. It replaced the Home Care Packages Program on 1 November 2025. If you are handed a booklet or find a website talking about "Home Care Packages", that is the old name. The Commonwealth Home Support Program (CHSP) is separate and still running, and will not transition before 1 July 2027.
There are 8 ongoing classifications. The assessment decides which one Mum is matched to, and each carries a quarterly budget. As at 1 July 2026 they run from $2,752.50 a quarter ($11,010.01 a year) at classification 1 up to $20,034.28 a quarter ($80,137.12 a year) at classification 8. Care management is drawn from within that budget, capped at 10%, not added on top. Unspent funds carry over one quarter only, up to $1,000 or 10% of the quarterly budget, whichever is greater.
If Mum transitioned across from a Home Care Package, she keeps funding equivalent to her old package, which sits at different amounts again.
What you contribute depends on the type of service, not just your income. There are three categories:
- Clinical supports (nursing, physiotherapy, nutrition): 0% contribution for everyone, whatever your income or assets. Fully funded does not mean unlimited, though. Clinical supports still come out of the quarterly budget, so the size of that budget still caps how much nursing or allied health Mum can receive.
- Independence services (personal care, transport, respite, social support): a full pensioner contributes 5%, a self-funded retiree 50%, with part pensioners in between.
- Everyday living services (domestic assistance, gardening, home maintenance, meals): a full pensioner contributes 17.5%, a self-funded retiree 80%.
Anyone who was receiving or approved for a Home Care Package on 12 September 2024 is covered by the "no worse off" principle and pays the same or less than they did before.
Contributions are worked out from an income and assets assessment with Services Australia, done after the funding allocation letter arrives. There is also a fee estimator on the My Aged Care website if you want to sanity-check the numbers before then.
8. Changing providers
You are not locked in, and the rules are more generous than most people expect.
You can change for any reason. Not liking how a provider communicates is reason enough. You do not owe anyone an explanation.
Find the new provider first. Line them up before you agree an end date with the current one, so there is no gap in service.
Transfer the referral code. Call My Aged Care on 1800 200 422 to arrange it. The new provider needs that code before services can start.
Agree an exit date with your current provider, and tell them as early as you can. The new provider's start date must be on or after that exit date, and ideally they are the same day.
Your funding moves with you, including unspent funds for ongoing services. If there are unspent Home Care Package funds, the government-held portion is available to the new provider immediately.
You cannot be charged an exit fee. Providers are not permitted to charge an exit amount when you leave, and anything you have paid in advance must be refunded. Do check your service agreement for notice periods, but an exit charge is not something you have to accept.
One thing to be clear on: under Support at Home you choose one provider to deliver all of your services. Splitting services across multiple providers is the NDIS model, not this one.
And if both members of a couple are receiving care, each of them has their own record, their own assessment and their own reference details. Two people, two sets of numbers, even in the same household.
9. What you can ask for while you wait
Waiting does not have to mean doing nothing.
- Urgent services. If circumstances change and Mum needs help now, call My Aged Care on 1800 200 422 or the assessment organisation and say so. There may be more immediate options available.
- Support for you. Carer Gateway offers phone, online and in-person support for carers, on 1800 422 737, Monday to Friday, 8am to 5pm.
- Research providers. Providers must publish their most frequently charged prices on My Aged Care and on their own website, so you can compare before you are committed to anything. Worth asking about minimum shift times as well as hourly rates: a lower rate with a two-hour minimum can cost more per visit than a higher rate with a one-hour minimum.
- An interpreter. TIS National on 131 450, then ask for 1800 200 422.
10. You don't have to work this out alone
It is a lot. You are organising care for someone you love, learning an unfamiliar system as you go, being handed between services, and holding it all together on top of everything else. Feeling overwhelmed is not a failure. It is a reasonable response to a genuinely confusing setup.
Having a chat with our team is free to you. It is one-on-one, a real conversation rather than a script, and there is no pressure to decide anything on the spot. If you are only just starting and not ready to think about providers, that is completely fine. We can help you make sense of where the request sits, what the assessment involves, and what the options look like once it is done. When you are ready, we match you with providers that fit your situation based on what you actually need, not a shortlist to wade through, and never a ranking of who is "best".
What matters at the end of all this is Mum, supported at home, with the right help around her, and you back to being her daughter instead of her full-time case manager. That is worth chasing a few reference numbers for.
Whenever you are ready, today, next week or three months from now, we are here.
