Support at Home replaced Home Care Packages and the Short-Term Restorative Care Programme on 1 November 2025. Nearly a year in, the part providers are still wrestling with is not the funding classifications. It is the care plan, because under quarterly budgets a care plan is no longer just a clinical document. It is a spending schedule, and if it does not match the budget cycle, money goes back.
Key takeaways
- Support at Home has eight funding classifications, running from basic care needs at Classification 1 to high and complex needs at Classification 8.
- An annual budget is split into four quarterly budgets, so care planning has to work in quarters rather than across a year.
- Participants can carry over unspent funds up to $1,000 or 10% of the quarterly budget, whichever is greater. Anything above that is lost at quarter end.
- Providers can deduct up to 10% of the quarterly budget for care management.
- From 1 July 2026, price caps apply to each service on the Support at Home service list. Providers set their own prices but cannot exceed the cap.
- A care plan that is not reviewed against actual spend mid-quarter is a forecast that nobody is checking.
What has to be in a Support at Home care plan?
A Support at Home care plan sets out the services a participant will receive, how those services address their assessed needs and goals, who will deliver them, and how the cost maps to the participant’s quarterly budget. It has to work simultaneously as a clinical document, a consent record and a spending plan.
That triple duty is the change from Home Care Packages. Under the old model, an annual budget gave considerable slack. A slow month was absorbed by a busier one. Quarterly budgets remove that slack, so the plan has to be realistic about timing, not just about need.
The practical consequence is that a care plan written once at commencement and reviewed annually will not hold. The plan needs to be a living allocation that is checked against actual delivery while there is still time in the quarter to act.
How do quarterly budgets change care planning?
Quarterly budgets mean unspent funds largely disappear at the end of each quarter rather than rolling forward. Participants can carry over up to $1,000 or 10% of the quarterly budget, whichever is greater. Anything beyond that is not available in the next quarter, so underdelivery has a permanent cost to the participant.
This inverts a habit a lot of home care providers built up over a decade. Under Home Care Packages, underspend was a manageable, sometimes deliberate, buffer. Under Support at Home, underspend is lost care.
| Scenario | Under Home Care Packages | Under Support at Home |
|---|---|---|
| Participant declines services for a month | Funds remain in the package | Counts against the quarter, likely lost |
| Provider cannot staff a service | Delivered later in the year | Lost if not delivered in the quarter |
| Unspent funds at period end | Accumulated, often substantially | Capped carry-over, remainder lost |
| Care plan review cadence | Annual review was workable | Needs mid-quarter checkpoints |
| Cost of a slow start | Recoverable | Largely unrecoverable |
The operational answer is a mid-quarter checkpoint. Around week six or seven, compare planned spend against actual delivery for every participant and schedule additional services before the quarter closes rather than after the funds have already gone. Doing this at quarter end is a reporting exercise. Doing it at week six is a care decision.
What are the eight Support at Home classifications?
Support at Home uses eight funding classifications reflecting assessed need, from Classification 1 for basic care needs through to Classification 8 for high and complex needs. Each carries a different annual budget, which is then divided into four quarterly budgets. The classification comes from the participant’s assessment, not from the provider.
Two things follow that matter for care planning.
The classification sets the ceiling, not the plan. Two participants on the same classification can have very different appropriate plans, and the assessed budget is not a target to be spent for its own sake. Delivering services that do not address assessed need in order to use up a quarterly budget is not good practice, and it will not survive scrutiny.
Classifications can change. If a participant’s needs change materially, reassessment can move them, and the care plan and the quarterly budget move with it. Providers who treat classification as fixed at commencement get caught out.
Our guide to Support at Home compliance and the strengthened Quality Standards covers what assessors look for, and digital care planning for home care covers how to capture and review plans so they hold up.
How does the care management fee work?
Providers can deduct up to 10% of a participant’s quarterly budget for care management. This is the funding that covers care planning, coordination, review and the administrative work of running the participant’s supports, and it comes out of the same quarterly budget that funds direct services.
The tension is obvious. Every dollar of care management is a dollar not spent on direct care, and the participant sees both. That makes it worth being able to show what the care management fee actually bought.
This is where care planning documentation earns its keep. If care management is invisible, it reads as overhead. If the participant can see the reviews that happened, the changes made as a result, and the coordination undertaken on their behalf, it reads as a service. The difference is entirely in whether the work was recorded.
What changes with price caps from 1 July 2026?
From 1 July 2026, price caps apply to each service on the Support at Home service list. Providers continue to set their own prices, but those prices cannot exceed the cap for the service. The cap constrains the price per service, not the participant’s overall budget.
Two implications for care planning are worth naming. Pricing that previously sat above a cap has to come down, which changes how far a quarterly budget stretches and therefore what a realistic care plan looks like. And because the cap is per service, the service categorisation applied in the plan directly determines the applicable cap. Categorising a service loosely is now a pricing decision, not just a reporting one.
The revenue and reconciliation side of this belongs with aged care financial and revenue management rather than the care plan itself.
What changed on 1 October 2026?
From 1 October 2026, personal care on the Support at Home service list moved from the Independence contribution category to Clinical Supports. That means participants no longer pay a contribution for personal care, such as help with showering, dressing, eating, personal hygiene, non-clinical continence management and taking their own medication. It still needs to be approved in the participant’s support plan and paid from their available Support at Home funds, and service IDs haven’t changed. One thing to watch: personal care delivered before 1 October still attracts the old contribution, even if you claim it afterwards. It’s worth checking that care plans, service agreements and statements show the change from 1 October.
What should care planning software do under Support at Home?
At minimum, care planning software should let you build a plan that maps services to assessed needs and goals, show planned spend against the participant’s current quarterly budget while the quarter is still open, capture consent and plan changes with a date stamp, and record delivery against the plan rather than only against the roster.
The last one is where most systems fall down. A plan that shows what was intended, sitting next to a roster that shows what was scheduled, still does not tell you what was delivered. Under quarterly budgets, delivered is the only figure that counts.
FlowLogic’s Support at Home software connects care plans, client records and service delivery, so the plan, the budget and what was actually delivered sit in one place. Support at Home’s funding mechanics differ from how Home Care Packages were handled, so when you assess any system, check that it covers quarterly budgets and classification reporting end to end.
For the evidence and standards angle rather than the funding angle, see Support at Home compliance and the quality standards and our piece on digital care planning for home care providers. The broader obligations sit with aged care compliance and safety software.
What to check this quarter
Pick ten participants and answer three questions about each. What percentage of this quarter’s budget has actually been delivered, not scheduled? If they are tracking below plan, what has been booked to close the gap before the quarter ends? And when was the care plan last reviewed against what the participant currently needs rather than what they needed at commencement?
If those three answers take more than a few minutes per participant to produce, that is the finding. Under quarterly budgets, the cost of slow visibility is care that the participant was funded for and did not receive.
Book a walkthrough
Want to see care plans, delivery and quarterly budget position in one view? Book a walkthrough and we will run it with your own classification mix.
Prefer to start smaller? Tell us how you currently track quarterly spend and we will tell you where the visibility gap usually sits.
Frequently asked questions
What is in a Support at Home care plan?
The services a participant will receive, how those services address their assessed needs and goals, who delivers them, and how the cost maps to their quarterly budget. Under Support at Home the care plan functions as a spending schedule as well as a clinical document.
Do participants pay a contribution for personal care under Support at Home?
Not from 1 October 2026. Personal care is now in the Clinical Supports category, so it’s fully government funded when it’s approved in the support plan and funds are available. Personal care delivered before 1 October still attracts the old contribution, even if it’s claimed later.
How much unspent Support at Home funding can be carried over?
Participants can carry over up to $1,000 or 10% of the quarterly budget, whichever is greater. Funds above that threshold are not available in the following quarter, which is why mid-quarter review matters more than end-of-quarter reporting.
How many Support at Home funding classifications are there?
Eight, running from Classification 1 for basic care needs to Classification 8 for high and complex needs. Each carries an annual budget divided into four quarterly budgets, and the classification comes from the participant’s assessment.
How much can providers charge for care management?
Up to 10% of the participant’s quarterly budget. Because it comes from the same budget that funds direct services, providers should be able to evidence what the care management fee delivered in reviews, coordination and plan changes.
What happens to Support at Home prices from 1 July 2026?
Price caps apply to each service on the Support at Home service list. Providers still set their own prices but cannot exceed the applicable cap, which means service categorisation in the care plan now determines which cap applies.
