From 1 October 2026, Support at Home personal care – being helped into the shower, dressed, or having continence care managed at home – will be free to the recipient as part of their home care package. Here’s what that means in practice, and what you need to do to make sure your parent gets the services they’re entitled to.
What is Support at Home?
Support at Home is the Federal Government’s main in-home aged care program, which replaced Home Care Packages and Short-Term Restorative Care on 1 November 2025. It funds services that help older Australians stay living in their own homes – everything from nursing and allied health to personal care, cleaning, transport, home modifications and respite. Funding is allocated through eight classification levels and paid to your chosen approved provider on a quarterly budget. If your parent isn’t already in the system, the first step is an assessment through My Aged Care on 1800 200 422. Support at Home personal care services – including showering, dressing and continence support – become free from 1 October 2026.
What’s changing for Support at Home personal care?
On 22 April 2026, the Minister for Aged Care and Seniors, Sam Rae, announced that personal care – showering, dressing and continence support – will be reclassified as clinical care under the Support at Home program which means that older people receiving an aged care package will no longer be charged for these services.
When announcing the change, Minister Rae said: “Showering, dressing, continence care… these aren’t optional extras. They’re the basics of ageing with dignity, and no older Australian should miss out because of cost.” This will be welcome news to the thousands of older Australians have been hit with since the new program began on 1 November 2025.
When do the changes to Support at Home personal care start?
1 October 2026. Frustratingly, that’s still six months away – meaning families currently paying around $50 out-of-pocket per shower (and in some cases, where providers impose two-hour minimums, up to $200 a session) will continue to do so until then. The full hourly cost of a personal care worker is around $100; what your parent pays out-of-pocket depends on their income tier, with full pensioners paying as little as $5 and self-funded retirees paying the most. If that bill is forcing your parent to skip showers or skip meals to afford them, you are not alone, and it’s worth raising it with your provider now (more on that below).
Why this is a big deal – and why advocates saw it coming
When the Albanese Government’s new Aged Care Act took effect in November 2025, it bundled showering, dressing and continence care into the “independence” category, where recipients had to pay between 5% and 50% of the cost depending on their income and assets.
Advocacy groups, including Aged Care Reform Now (ACRN)*, warned this was indefensible from the start. Back in 2024, in their joint submission to the Senate’s review of the Aged Care Bill 2024 – co-authored by Carers’ Circle, Aged Care Justice and Australian Independent Retirees – the advocates wrote that the new care classifications would lead to “people foregoing essential services due to cost,” and risked creating “a cheaper and unregulated market” that would leave older Australians more vulnerable, not less.
That’s exactly what happened. Within months of the new Act taking effect, families were contacting the advocates to ask whether it was true that showering would now cost their parent up to $50 a session. It took thousands of complaints, a joint letter from 21 cross-parliamentary MPs – including Greens Senator Penny Allman-Payne, Independent Senator David Pocock, Independent MPs Zali Steggall, Allegra Spender and Kate Chaney, and Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce, work from the Inspector General of Aged Care Natalie Siegel-Brown – and sustained pressure from advocates across the country before the Government finally moved.
Amina Schipp and Cecilia Warren, Aged Care Reform Now Committee Members said: “It shouldn’t have taken this long. But the policy is now where it should have been from day one.”
What you should do now: A 5-step checklist
If you’re helping coordinate Support at Home personal care for an ageing parent, here’s how to make sure they get the benefit of the change as soon as it starts.
- Check your parent’s current support plan. Look at what services are listed under “personal care” or “independence.” If showering, dressing or continence care aren’t already in the plan, they won’t automatically appear on 1 October. Speak to your parent’s care partner now to get them added.
- Ask your provider in writing how they’ll apply the change. From 1 October 2026, providers should not be charging any co-contribution for these three services. Get their answer on letterhead or by email – and keep it.
- Audit invoices in November. Mistakes happen. Check the first post-change invoice line by line. If you’re charged for a shower, dressing or continence care after 1 October, request a refund and report the provider to the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission on 1800 951 822.
- If your parent is on the waiting list, the change still applies. Around 100,000 older Australians are waiting for a Support at Home package. The reclassification means that whenever their package is approved, personal care will be free from day one.
- Push back on “extras.” Some providers are quietly recategorising old services as new ones to preserve fees. If something that was free yesterday is suddenly a “wellbeing add-on,” ask why.
How are the changes to Support at Home personal care being funded and the impact on self-funded retirees (again)
The Federal Government has set aside roughly $1 billion over the forward estimates to fund the change. It’s being paid for by scrapping the higher private health insurance rebate tiers for Australians aged 65 and over – a policy that gave over-65s a rebate of up to 28%, and over-70s up to 32%, compared with 24% for everyone else. From now on, all age groups will receive the same base 24% rebate.
For a couple paying around $6,000 a year in premiums, that’s roughly $240 more per year for 65–69 year olds and nearly $500 more for over-70s. Again, aged care advocates are not happy. “It’s like we win one thing and lose another,” said Ana Willis, CEO of Aged Care Justice and Aged Care Reform Now Committee Member. “It’s really unfair that many of us have always paid for top cover, never relied on the Government, and we are penalised yet again,” said Amina.
We’ll publish a separate Carers’ Circle article shortly on what this means for your parents.
What this doesn’t fix
This is a win – but it’s a partial one. The Support at Home program still has serious problems, including:
- Cleaning, gardening, shopping and meal preparation remain in the “everyday living” category, where co-payments of 17.5% – 80% apply. For many older people, a clean house and a hot meal are just as essential to staying at home safely as a shower.
- The $15,000 lifetime cap on home modifications hasn’t moved, even though installing an accessible bathroom alone can blow that budget.
- Long waits for assessments and packages remain the rule, not the exception.
Big thanks to all of the advocates who have been pushing this agenda – as you can see, the fight for fairer and high quality care is far from over.
Useful links
- My Aged Care — Support at Home program
- My Aged Care — Apply for an assessment (1800 200 422)
- Department of Health, Disability and Ageing — Personal care to be fully funded under Support at Home from October
- Minister Sam Rae — ABC News Breakfast interview, 22 April 2026
- The Conversation — Government finally to cover full cost of showering under home care program
- The Conversation — A free shower is the least older people can expect
- The Conversation — NDIS slashed and higher health insurance subsidy for over-65s scrapped, in Health Minister Butler’s package
- AAP News — Showering costs to be covered in aged care backdown
- Hellocare — $200 for a shower. This is what aged care has come to
- Aged Care Reform Now — Submissions to Government
- Kate Chaney MP — Parliamentarians demand urgent action on Labor’s ‘botched’ aged care reforms (30 March 2026)
- Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission — 1800 951 822
- Carers’ Circle — The Taskforce report on aged care funding leaves more questions than answers
*Disclaimer: For full transparency, the author was a Founding Member of Aged Care Reform Now and co-authored some of the submissions into the aged care reforms.
Carers’ Circle helps the adult children of ageing parents navigate aged care, support their parents to live their best life, and find a bit of breathing room along the way. If this article helped, please share it with a friend who’s in the thick of it too.
