What Services Can Support at Home Funding Be Used For?
This is the part most people get wrong. Your classification level does not change which services can be funded. Every Support at Home classification, from 1 through to 8, draws on the same government service list. The Department of Health's program manual is explicit: the service list applies to all ongoing and short-term classifications.
What your classification changes is your budget. A higher classification means a larger quarterly budget, which pays for more hours and a wider combination of services. It does not unlock service types that someone on a lower classification is shut out of. What differs between levels is frequency and mix, not what is on the menu.
What you personally receive is set by your support plan. After your aged care assessment, the specific services you are approved for are recorded in your Notice of Decision and support plan, and a provider can only deliver what has been approved. Two people on the same classification can end up with very different care.
The Three Service Categories
Funded services sit in three categories. The category sets how much you contribute towards each service.
Clinical supports. Fully funded by the Australian Government, meaning you contribute nothing towards them whatever your income or assets. Fully funded does not mean unlimited: clinical supports are still paid for out of your quarterly budget, so the size of that budget still caps how much nursing or allied health you can receive.
- Nursing care: registered nurse, enrolled nurse, nursing assistant, and specialised nursing consumables
- Allied health and other therapeutic services: physiotherapist, occupational therapist, podiatry, dietitian or nutritionist, exercise physiologist, speech pathologist, psychologist, counselling or psychotherapy, social worker, music therapist, allied health assistance
- Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health practitioner and health worker
- Prescribed nutrition, covering prescribed supplementary dietary products and feeding aids
- Care management and restorative care management
Independence. Support that helps you manage daily activities and keep your skills. Contributions here are moderate and depend on your income and assets.
- Personal care: assistance with self-care and daily living, help with self-administering medication, non-clinical continence management
- Social support and community engagement: individual and group social support, accompanied activities, cultural support, digital education and support, assistance with personal affairs
- Therapeutic services for independent living: acupuncturist, chiropractor, osteopath, remedial masseuse, diversional therapist, art therapist
- Respite care, either flexible respite or community and centre-based respite
- Transport: direct transport with a driver and car, or taxi and rideshare vouchers
- Assistive technology and home modifications
From 1 October 2026, personal care moves out of independence and into clinical supports. That means you will no longer contribute towards personal care, though it still draws on your quarterly budget like everything else.
Everyday living. Support that keeps your home liveable. Contributions here are the highest of the three categories.
- Domestic assistance: general house cleaning, laundry, shopping assistance
- Home maintenance and repairs, including gardening and the cost of materials such as a replacement tap or door handle
- Meals: meal preparation and meal delivery
Our contributions calculator will show you what these categories mean for your own circumstances, and our guide to Support at Home contributions explains how the rates are worked out.
What This Means For You
Your support plan decides what you can receive. The government's service list sets out everything that can be funded under Support at Home, but each service has to be approved for you individually and written into your support plan before a provider can deliver it. Being on the list is not the same as being approved for it. If you need a service you have not been approved for, you will need to request a reassessment, and your provider will assist you with that.
What is not true is that a lower classification locks you out of particular service types. If you have been told nursing or physiotherapy is unavailable because your level is too low, that is not how the program works. Clinical supports can be approved at any classification. What a smaller budget limits is frequency, not eligibility.
Provider prices matter more than most people expect, and so does something most people never think to ask about: minimum shift times. Providers set their own prices and must publish them on My Aged Care and on their own website, but they also set a minimum billable shift, usually 30 minutes, 1 hour or 2 hours. A lower hourly rate attached to a longer minimum shift can cost you more per visit than a higher rate with a shorter one.
As an illustration, take gardening. Provider A charges $100 an hour with a 2 hour minimum, so every visit costs $200. Provider B charges $130 an hour with a 1 hour minimum, so every visit costs $130. If you have a small garden that only needs an hour, Provider B leaves $70 more in your budget each visit to spend on other services, despite the higher advertised rate.
Ask about both the hourly price and the minimum shift before you commit. Read about how we vet providers, or speak with a CareAbout Care Adviser about finding a provider that fits your plan and your budget. If your current provider is not working for you, you can also change provider.
