A practical follow-up to our comparison of Support at Home and Home Care Packages for providers. Written for owners, finance staff and care managers at in-home aged care providers. General information only. Program settings change, so check the date on any government page you rely on.
Support at Home replaced Home Care Packages and the Short-Term Restorative Care Programme on 1 November 2025. A year later, most providers have the new claiming and statements running. What still causes trouble is usually not a new rule nobody has heard of. It's an old Home Care Package habit that survived the switch, sitting in a spreadsheet, a fee schedule or a staff member's head.
Here are six we keep hearing about, and the rule that replaced each one.
1. "The money will still be there next month"
Under Home Care Packages, unspent funds built up and could be spent later. Support at Home allocates ongoing funding quarterly, and a participant can carry over unspent funds up to $1,000 or 10% of the quarter's budget, whichever is greater.
There's one exception that catches people. A participant who moved across from a Home Care Package may also have unspent HCP funds in their budget, and the department says those have no carry-over limit. So two clients on the same classification can have very different room to move. Care managers need to know which kind of money they are planning with before they promise extra hours.
2. "We'll cover it with a package management fee"
Separate administration and travel fees are gone. The department's pricing guidance says prices must be based on the cost of delivering each service, which can include labour, administration, travel and a margin, but you can't charge separate administration or travel fees or claim them from the care management account. Care management itself is funded from 10% of each participant's quarterly budget, pooled at the provider level.
If your old fee schedule still has a line for package management, it needs to be folded into your service prices and explained in the service agreement, not carried over.
3. "Everyone pays the same rate"
Contributions now depend on two things: the person's means, assessed by Services Australia, and the category of each service. Clinical supports carry no contribution. Independence and everyday living services do, with everyday living the highest.
Two details trip up billing. First, the department says personal care moved into the clinical supports contribution category from 1 October 2026, so a rate table built last year may be charging contributions that no longer apply. Second, people who were receiving a package, waiting on the National Priority System, or approved for a package on 12 September 2024 are covered by the no worse off principle and pay the same or less than they would have under the old program. There is also a lifetime cap on contributions, $140,652.80 as at 20 September 2026, indexed each March and September.
Our Participant Contributions feature sets rates by service category and means category, applies no worse off protection as a ceiling and stops at the lifetime cap. Whatever you use, test it against the department's current schedule rather than last year's.
4. "Invoice the client, then claim"
The order is the other way round now. You deliver the service, then claim from Services Australia. Services Australia works out the participant's contribution, subtracts it, and pays the balance from the participant's funding. You then invoice the participant for their contribution and anything extra they agreed to pay for. Every participant also gets a monthly statement showing services delivered, contributions paid and the remaining quarterly budget.
For new participants, the start is timed too. After the funding allocation letter, the person has 56 days to enter a service agreement and start services, with a possible 28-day extension, and the provider notifies Services Australia within 28 days of services starting.
5. "It all goes to the Data Exchange"
Our original comparison listed Data Exchange (DEX) reporting among the things a Support at Home system needs. That was wrong. DEX is the reporting platform for the Commonwealth Home Support Programme (CHSP). Support at Home services are claimed through Services Australia instead. If you run both programs, you need both: DEX for your CHSP clients, Services Australia claims for Support at Home. Rostery's DEX reporting is built for the CHSP side of that split.
6. "We know the incident list"
The Serious Incident Response Scheme applies to in-home care, and it has eight types of reportable incident: unreasonable use of force, unlawful sexual contact or inappropriate sexual conduct, psychological or emotional abuse, unexpected death, stealing or financial coercion by a staff member, neglect, inappropriate use of restrictive practices, and unexplained absence from care. Our original article left out restrictive practices. Priority 1 incidents are reported within 24 hours of becoming aware, and Priority 2 within 30 days. Our SIRS glossary entry has the definitions in one place.
A quick check for this month
Pick three participants: one who moved across from a Home Care Package, one who started this year, and one on a high classification. For each, check the carry-over and any unspent HCP funds, the contribution category on every service line since October, and whether the last monthly statement went out complete. If the service categories themselves are unclear, the free Support at Home service list shows what sits in each category.
If families are asking about habit 1, our Quora Space has a plain answer to what happens to unspent Support at Home money at the end of each quarter.
Written by the Rostery team in Sydney. General information only, not legal or financial advice. Sources: Department of Health, Disability and Ageing, How the Support at Home program works; Prices for Support at Home participants; Support at Home participant contributions (lifetime cap as at 20 September 2026); Schedule of contributions for Support at Home services from 1 July 2026; Support at Home provider training module 4, claiming and payment arrangements; Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission, SIRS in residential and home services. Read 9 November 2026.
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