Responsibilities of providers

Responsibilities to Support at Home participants

As a registered provider, you are responsible for delivering safe, high-quality aged care services for your participants, using a wellness and reablement approach, supporting their diverse needs and protecting their rights and privacy.

Your responsibilities to participants

As a Support at Home provider, you must understand and comply with your responsibilities in line with the aged care legislation.  

These responsibilities relate to: 

When providing Support at Home services to participants, you must: 

Use the Aged Care Provider Requirements Search tool to find all your requirements.

Any quality standards that apply

As a registered provider, you must comply with the Aged Care Quality Standards. 

You will be audited against these standards by the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission (ACSQC). You must be able to provide evidence of compliance. 

If the ACSQC finds a provider has not complied with the requirements of the Aged Care Quality Standards, they may take compliance action. 

Statement of Rights

The Aged Care Act 2024 includes a Statement of Rights, outlining the rights that participants have when accessing aged care services. 

The Statement of Rights include the right to: 

  • independence, autonomy, empowerment and freedom of choice
  • equitable access
  • quality and safe funded aged care services
  • respect for privacy and information
  • person-centred communication and ability to raise issues without reprisal
  • advocates, significant persons and social connections. 

You must take all reasonable and proportionate steps to ensure your actions are consistent with the Statement of Rights. 

What you need to do

Prepare documentation

For each Support at Home participant, you must prepare and provide: 

The documents must be clear and easy to understand.  

You must consult participants before making changes to these documents.

Care management

You must provide care management services to all participants.   

You must deliver at least one direct care management activity (i.e. speaking, communicating or meeting with the participant and/or their registered supporter) to each participant, every month. 

Some participants may choose to self-manage their services. You must still provide care management to ensure you deliver safe and quality care and services based on their needs, goals and preferences.  

Care management must comply with the Aged Care Quality Standards. 

Embed wellness and reablement

You should support participants to maximise their wellbeing, independence, autonomy and capacity through wellness and reablement approaches. This responsibility is outlined in the Statement of Principles and Aged Care Quality Standards.  

To embed wellness and reablement, you should partner with participants and:  

  • ensure services focus on working with participants to achieve the goals outlined in their support plan, and as agreed in their care plan or goal plan
  • apply a ‘doing with’ approach to service delivery
  • offer time-limited interventions, where appropriate
  • regularly review and monitor changes to a participant’s needs and goals
  • have an implementation plan outlining your approach to embedding wellness and reablement in service delivery. 

For more information, refer to Chapter 5 of the Support at Home program manual. 

Support diverse needs

Older people have a right to quality and safe aged care services, with their individual identity, culture, spirituality and diversity valued and supported.  

The Aged Care Quality Standards require providers to demonstrate that they understand and value participants, including their identity, culture, ability, diversity, beliefs and life experiences. 

You must: 

  • take into account the needs of older people from diverse backgrounds and life experiences
  • offer accessible, culturally safe, culturally appropriate, trauma‑aware and healing‑informed aged care services
  • deliver services in a way that is free from all forms of discrimination, abuse and neglect
  • treat participants with dignity and respect
  • respect their personal privacy.

Refer to resources to support diverse needs.

Dignity of risk

You should work with participants to balance your duty of care with a participant’s right to make choices, even if their choices include some risk to themselves. This is known as ‘dignity of risk’ and is an older person’s right under the Statement of Rights.   

You should document a participant’s choices related to taking personal risks in their care plan or goal plan and outline: 

  • the risk identified
  • mitigation strategies that you have discussed and/or implemented
  • your recommendations
  • the participant's choice
  • confirmation the participant accepts the personal risks associated with their choices.  

For detailed case studies on dignity of risk. 

Privacy

You must protect the privacy of your participants, which includes: 

  • complying with all applicable laws relating to the use of personal information
  • implementing security safeguards to protect participants’ personal information against loss or misuse
  • meeting the Australian Privacy Principles in the Privacy Act 1988 and obligations in state or territory privacy laws. 

Find out more

Read Chapter 5 (Support at Home program overview) of the Support at Home program manual.  

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