Support at Home program update – Webinar

Transcript

Department of Health and Aged Care
Support at Home Program Update

Thursday 19 September 2024

Moderator:

Michael Lye
Deputy Secretary, Aged Care Group
Department of Health and Aged Care

Panellists:

Nick Morgan
Assistant Secretary, Support at Home Reform Branch
Department of Health and Aged Care

Susan Trainor
Assistant Secretary, Funding Operations and Analysis Branch
Department of Health and Aged Care

Lezah Rushton
Assistant Secretary, Assessment and Home Care Transition Branch
Department of Health and Aged Care

[Opening visual of slide with text saying ‘Australian Government with Crest (logo)’, ‘Department of Health and Aged Care’, ‘Support at Program update’, ‘September 2024’, ‘agedcareengagement.health.gov.au’]

[The visuals during this webinar are of each speaker connecting via videoconference and visible on the right-hand side of the screen, speaking with reference to the content of a PowerPoint presentation being played on screen] 

Michael Lye:

Good afternoon and thank you for attending today’s webinar about the new Support at Home Program. 

I’d like to start today by acknowledging the Traditional Custodians of the lands on which we’re virtually meeting today. We’re based in Canberra on the lands of the Ngunnawal people and we recognise any other families or communities with connection to the land of the ACT region. I also wish to acknowledge and respect their continuing culture and the contribution they make to the life of this city and the region. I’d also like to acknowledge any other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who may be joining today’s event and acknowledge that many of you are coming from other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander lands today.

I’m Michael Lye, the Deputy Secretary of the Aged Care Group at the Department of Health and Aged Care. Today I’m joined by Nick Morgan who’s the Assistant Secretary of the Support at Home Reform Branch and Susan Trainor who’s Assistant Secretary of the Funding, Operations and Analysis Branch in the Aged Care Group.

We’re recording today’s webinar so it can be shared for those that are unable to join us today. It will be available on the department’s website in the coming days. You’ll also be able to access a copy of the slides on our website after the webinar. 

There’ll also be a Q-and-A session at the end of the presentation today. There’s no option for attendees to turn on their video or microphone. However you can lodge questions in the Slido box on the right-hand side of your screen. We’ll attempt to answer and respond to as many questions as possible at the end of the webinar. Questions submitted during the registration process have also been considered for the question and answer session today. 

During the webinar we will provide an update on the Support at Home Program which is the next significant phase of the aged care reform after the new Act. We’ll also hear from Susan Trainor on where the taskforce landed with the participant contribution pension status test for Support at Home. 

So I’d now like to introduce Nick Morgan to talk to you about the Support at Home Program. Thanks Nick.

Nick Morgan:

Thanks Michael. Good afternoon everyone. I’m Nick Morgan, the Assistant Secretary of the Support at Home Reform Branch here in the department. Today I’m going to cover the features of the Support at Home Program that will commence from July 2025. The presentation covers a lot of ground. But as Michael said these slides, as well as a range of other supporting material will be available on our website and I’ll also be doing some extra Q-and-A sessions next week.

Let me start by stating that Support at Home aims to help people to stay living in home in the community for longer. For most people this is their preference. There’ll be faster access to services, with a target wait-time of three months from assessment to services from July 2027. There’ll be improved access to early interventions such as home modifications, assistive technology and short-term allied health services to keep people independent. When needs become more complex there will be more support available through a higher maximum budget and an end-of-life classification.

So what will Support at Home look like from July 2025? This slide is an overview of the system. And I did walk through this diagram in a webinar back in December last year. And I’m actually going to quickly do the same thing again so you get a sense of the big picture before I go into some of the details.

At the highest level the Support at Home Program will replace the Home Care Packages Program and the Short-Term Restorative Care Program from July 2025. The Commonwealth Home Support Program will transition to Support at Home no earlier than July 2027.

Okay so if we start on the left of this diagram. Older people enter aged care along the orange path there through My Aged Care and that may be by phone, online, via GP referral or via a care finder and so on. So you’ll be able to access some advisory services like dementia advisory services directly.

After registering with My Aged Care a person will be referred to assessment in the home or in hospital. States and territories will retain 100% of hospital assessments. Under the new single assessment arrangements all assessment organisations will be able to assess people for all aged care services.

This may include referrals to the advisory services and approvals for other aged care services such as residential aged care. In 2025 people with low needs will continue to be assigned to services under the Commonwealth Home Support Program, the pink box in the diagram, as occurs today. And that will be the case until at least 2027.

People with higher needs who want to remain at home will be assessed for Support at Home. They’ll receive a support plan at assessment which they will take to a single Support at Home provider, similar to how the Home Care Packages Program operates today. A support plan may include approvals for short-term services and/or ongoing services that would be arranged through the single provider.

So the top purple box describes three types of short-term support available under Support at Home from July 2025. This includes assistive technology and home modifications, a Short-Term Restorative Pathway focused on allied health supports similar to the Short-Term Restorative Care Program today, and an End-of-Life Pathway for people diagnosed with three months or less to live. I’ll talk more about each of these shortly.

The lower purple box describes the ongoing services. People approved for ongoing services at assessment will get a support plan, with a classification and quarterly budget that can be used to access services that they’ve been approved for. All services will be listed in a service list for the program. And care management funding will be pooled with service providers to deliver to participants as required.

The area of the diagram between the two purple boxes on the right shows the payment arrangements. After a provider delivers services to a person they submit an invoice to the government which is paid against the client’s budget or the provider’s care management fund and/or an invoice to the participant where a contribution is payable. There’ll be price caps for each service set by government, informed by the Independent Health and Aged Care Pricing Authority.

Providers may also receive additional grants if they meet a set of criteria which I’ll also touch on shortly. And lastly where a person’s needs change significantly they’ll need to be reassessed into a higher classification.

All right. So before I jump into more detail I want to clarify a few things for existing Home Care Package clients who may be watching this webinar and want to know what this means for them. 

So the key messages are that existing Home Care Package recipients will receive a Support at Home budget from July ’25 that simply matches their Home Care Package today. Same for people who are waiting. People with an approved but unallocated package on the national prioritisation system will receive a Support at Home budget that aligns to their approved Home Care Package when available. Home Care Package recipients with Commonwealth unspent funds will retain those funds for use under Support at Home.

All Support at Home recipients, including those who have transitioned from the Home Care Packages Program will have quarterly budgets under Support at Home. That means your Home Care Package level will be essentially divided by four and allocated every three months. If a participant is reassessed at a later date onto a higher budget, it will be at one of the new Support at Home classifications. Grandfathering arrangements for participant contributions will also apply to people transitioning to Support at Home.

All existing Short-Term Restorative Care clients will continue and complete the current eight-week episode they would be on. And any requirements or new episodes post 1 July 2025 would need to be reassessed under Support at Home.

Participants can provide consent to their support plan being added to their My Health Record to enable their provider and other authorised care professionals to view their plan.

All right. So I’ll step through the elements of the program in a bit more detail now.

Firstly we are obviously aware that some people currently wait too long for their aged care assessment. And the new single assessment arrangements will ensure timely assessments for people needing aged care services. Under the new arrangements all assessment services will be able to assess for all aged care services. And this is an important change. 

Today if an ACAT has a backlog of assessments for some reason, there’s no other organisation that can help take up that slack. That will not be the case under the single assessment arrangements. There will be new funding arrangements and KPIs and program assurance arrangements to improve timeliness under single assessment.

Assessments will continue to be done primarily face-to-face either in the home or in a hospital.

The assessments for Support at Home will be done using the new Integrated Assessment Tool that was introduced in July this year. And that’s used to collect information that is used to determine a person’s classification in Support at Home.

So a participant approved for Support at Home will receive a notice of decision of an individual’s support plan to share with their Support at Home provider. The support plan will contain a summary of their aged care needs and goals, a list of all the services they are approved to access under Support at Home, an ongoing quarterly budget based on their assessed classification, and/or an approval for short-term supports which may include a budget for assistive technology and/or home modifications, short-term restorative support, end-of-life care. An existing client who needs restorative care, for example after a fall, would be able to access the restorative support on top of their ongoing classification if required.

On the other hand a new client who is assessed for restorative care will access the restorative pathway first before being reviewed to determine if they need ongoing support.

One of the changes under the new Aged Care Act is that the assessor needs to approve access to individual services at the point of assessment. This is necessary to meet constitutional requirements. And that is different to the way Home Care Packages Program operates.

From the 1st of July 2025 older people being assessed or reassessed for their suitability to receive in-home aged care services will be assigned to a support classification. The new framework was informed by more than 22,000 assessments collected in a trial of the Integrated Assessment Tool conducted from April to July 2023.

The current four Home Care Package levels will be replaced by eight ongoing Support at Home funding classifications. Alongside these eight classifications we also have two short-term support classifications as I’ve mentioned, the Restorative Care Pathway and End-of-Life Pathway. 

Indicative funding levels for each class are outlined on the slide, noting that these may change a little prior to program commencement. They start at around $11,000 and go up to $78,000. And remember unlike Home Care Packages, assistive technology and home modifications are funded on top of these amounts for those who need them. 

So how does an assessor determine which classification a person gets? Well the assessment tool uses several different assessment instruments to collect information about functional, physical, cognitive, psychological, social, medical factors, as well as things like the home environment. The scores from these different assessment instruments go into a formula to recommend an ongoing classification. 

The formula was developed by looking at the trial data where we asked assessors to recommend the amount of services people needed. We looked at what combinations of characteristics align in terms of the level of funding needed to access those services. 

So the IAT will prompt assessors to consider whether people should access the Restorative Care Pathway. But it doesn’t explicitly recommend it. That is left with the assessor. The End-of-Life Pathway has its own eligibility criteria that I’ll talk about shortly.

I’ll also note – and it’s an important note – that assessors may override the recommendation of the Integrated Assessment Tool if they have good reason to do so. 

I also think it’s important to realise that it’s very unlikely that any person would progress through each and every individual classification. And in fact I don’t think it’s possible in terms of how the formula works. It is more likely that any event that triggers a re-assessment results in a person sort of jumping a few levels. So we’re not expecting to see a big increase in assessments as people move up the classifications.

All right. From 1 July 2025 there will be a detailed service list for all in-home aged care that’s summarised in this slide. The service list will specify the services that may be accessed through the program. There are three key service categories, each with their own service types, services and consumer contribution arrangements. 

These categories include clinical services like nursing support, allied health, nutrition and care management, independent services like personal care, community engagement, respite and transport among others, and everyday living services like meals, maintenance and domestic supports. The service list will be accompanied by price caps set by government, based on advice of the Independent Health and Aged Care Pricing Authority. This means that providers cannot charge more than the price caps for services on the list.

Providers may offer services privately to people that are not on the list but they’d need to do so through a private arrangement with clients as they would not be subsidised by government.

There will be capped hours for cleaning and gardening that a participant can access under Support at Home. The services will be capped at 52 hours per year for cleaning and 18 hours per year for gardening. The annual caps aim to ensure funding is available to focus on clinical needs and maintaining independence. The department will monitor the cleaning and gardening cap settings to ensure they remain fit for purpose.

All right. Funding for Support at Home will grow in line with the projected growth in participants. The target wait time is three months from assessment to receipt of services and we’re aiming to get to that by July 2027. However when Support at Home starts there will be a wait time to access services that has been inherited from the Home Care Packages Program and this wait time will be reduced over time.

Under Support at Home there will be a new prioritisation mechanism to replace the national priority system for Home Care Packages. Access to Support at Home services will be prioritised using information collected during the assessment process. We’re looking at having at least three priority levels which will determine the access to services, the time it takes to access services, with those with the most urgent need receiving their services sooner than those with less urgent needs. 

Under the new priority system it is expected an interim allocation set at 60% of the full budget will be made available to people once the wait time gets too long, with the remaining 40% of their budget allocated when funding becomes available. The prioritisation model is one area where we are still finalising and settling the finer details.

All right. The Support at Home classifications will be divided into four budgets that each cover three months of the year. Participants can move unspent funds of up to $1,000 or 10% of their quarterly budget, whichever is higher, between quarters to meet unplanned needs. For example a person with a $4,000 quarterly budget who only uses $3,000 in the first quarter due to being away on holiday will have a $5,000 budget the next quarter. However if they only spend $3,000 again in the second quarter, they can still only carry $1,000 in unspent funds into the third quarter. The savings don’t keep accruing like they do in the Home Care Packages Program.

Participants and their provider have the flexibility to manage their funding each quarter across their approved services. Budgets will be held on behalf of the participant in an account managed by Services Australia and providers will bill against this account after services are delivered. And again participants with unspent Home Care Package funds will retain access to these funds for approved services.

All right. The Restorative Care Pathway will replace the existing Short-Term Restorative Care Program from 1 July 2025. It will focus on early intervention and prevention to restore function, supporting participants to remain independent at home for longer. Participants will receive coordinated allied health services to help them achieve their goals and slow functional decline. 

Eligibility for the Restorative Care Pathway is assessed via an aged care assessment. Under the single assessment arrangements, people with lower-level needs who don’t currently have access to the STRC, Short-Term Restorative Care Program, will have access to this pathway. We’re currently going out to market for advice on some of the prompts we should be building into the assessment tool to flag people who might benefit from restorative care for the assessors to consider.

Under the new Restorative Care Pathway a participant will be eligible for up to 12 weeks of restorative support, with a focus on intensive allied health to regain function and build strength and capabilities. This may be extended further to up to 16 weeks in certain circumstances, for example where additional time is needed to deliver services in regional and remote areas or to build relationships and trust in the delivery of culturally-safe care. 

The participant may access the Restorative Care Pathway for no more than two episodes of restorative care in a 12-month period. A restorative care partner will support participants undergoing a restorative care episode to identify goals, develop a plan and coordinate services to help meet those goals within the available time period. 

Participants approved for the Restorative Care Pathway at assessment will receive a budget of around $6,000 for the 12-week episode. Where a restorative care partner determines that additional services are required within the 12-week period they may seek approval for up to an additional $6,000 within that period. In addition participants will be able to access assistive technology and/or home modifications if required through a separate scheme with an automatic approval.

There will be 5,000 places available per quarter in the Restorative Care Pathway or 20,000 places per year.

So Support at Home will have an End-of-Life Pathway commencing from 1 July 2025. It will provide older people with the option to pass away in their own homes with their family. It will support participants who have been diagnosed with three months or less to live and wish to remain at home by providing an increase in the level of services available. It will be the highest funding classification per day under Support at Home. This will support the increased need for services in the last three months of life. A total of $25,000 will be available per eligible participant over a 12-week period, with a total of 16 weeks to use the funds just to provide some extra flexibility.

The eligibility requirements for accessing the End-of-Life Pathway are a doctor or nurse practitioner advising of the estimated life expectancy being less than three months and a score on a tool that’s also used in residential care called the Karnofsky Score of 40 or less.

Existing Support at Home participants will access the End-of-Life Pathway via a high-priority support plan review conducted by an aged care assessor. This will simply involve a review of the participant’s medical documents to determine eligibility to move from their current classification to the End-of-Life Pathway. Older people who are not already Support at Home participants will be referred for a high-priority assessment to confirm their eligibility for the End-of-Life Pathway and approve a list of services they may access.

End-of-Life Pathway services will be no different to those available in ongoing classifications as set out in the Support at Home service list. Older people assessed as requiring end-of-life care will also be able to access assistive technology under the Assistive Technology and Home Modification Scheme. The pathway is intended to provide additional in-home aged care services that will complement specialist palliative care services available under state and territory based schemes.

The lights.

All right. The new Assistive Technology and Home Modification Scheme will provide upfront access to equipment and products and home modifications through a separately funded scheme. Participants will be able to access products, equipment and home modifications without having to save funds from their quarterly budget. 

The scheme will be accessed via an aged care assessment. The assessment will recommend a participant’s funding tier based on their assessed needs. There’ll be a defined assistive technology and home modifications item list that will provide clarity to Support at Home providers about what they can provide under the AT-HM scheme. The categories for products and equipment are managing bodily functions, self-care, mobility, domestic life, communication and information management and home modifications. The full detailed list will be available in the coming weeks I hope or months.

There are three funding tiers for assistive technology and home modifications, low, medium and high. Funding tiers will have set time periods in which they must be used. The AT-HM funding will cover products and equipment, home modifications, but in addition the prescription and wraparound services and coordination costs to access the equipment.

If assessed and approved for both assistive technology and home modifications the amounts are additive. So you can receive both allocations at the same time.

As part of the assistive technology scheme we are working with states and territories to enable equipment loans through their existing loan schemes for items that are suitable for loan. We’re currently trialling equipment loans for Home Care Package clients in two regions in New South Wales with EnableNSW.

We expect the implementation of the loan scheme to be staged over time from July 2025, with any items required ahead of loans being available being purchased.

All right. Care management. Care management is concerned with ensuring that aged care services contribute to the overall wellbeing of an older person. It involves a person-centred approach and collaborative model of care in which a care partner works with the older person to help with their unique needs and challenges. All Support at Home participants will have access to care management which is important for helping participants get the best outcomes from their aged care services. 

Participants will have 10% of their quarterly budget set aside for care management. A care partner will deliver person-centred care management services which are focused on the participant’s wellbeing through activities such as care planning, service coordination including budget oversight, monitoring, review and evaluation of needs, and support and education including system navigation and problem solving.

Clinical and non-clinical staff will work together under a team-based approach, enabling clinical oversight of a participant’s wellbeing. Care partners will have preferred minimum qualifications, for example a Certificate IV in Aged Care. Clinical care partners will require a tertiary, health-related qualification, for example in nursing. Providers will have a care management fund which they will claim against for care management services as they are delivered to each participant. 

As I said the care management fund will be made up of 10% of a participant’s budget. And the government will also provide additional supplements in respect of participants with diverse needs.

Providers will be required to invoice for care management services after services have been delivered. 

Susan Trainor:

We appear to have lost Nick again but I’ll keep reading his talking notes until we get him back.

Care management will not include administrative costs such as scheduling, staff rostering, staff training and education. These are built into the service prices. Providers will have the flexibility to use their care management funds across their participant group and are responsible for managing available funding. There will be minimum expectations for how often a participant must deliver care management services to a participant.

I’ll now turn to self-management which I know will be important to a lot of people listening today. Participants can choose to self-manage similar to what occurs today under the Home Care Packages Program. Self-management gives participants choice and control over their services and how they are delivered. As is the case today self-management arrangements will be agreed between a participant and their Support at Home provider. 

It will look different for each participant based on their preferences, needs and abilities. If their provider can support these arrangements, self-management may include the participant choosing their own workers, coordinating their own services, scheduling their own services and paying invoices for later reimbursement. It is important to note that all Support at Home participants, including those who self-manage, will still receive care management support from their registered provider. This includes contributing 10% of the budget to the care management fund.

Participants who self-manage will access services based on their assessed need and care plan developed with their care partner. Providers will still need to undertake some administrative functions, for example claiming and working screening checks. As such providers may apply a capped loading to the service price of any third-party supplier to cover administrative costs where the participant has chosen their own workers. The price inclusive of the loading must not exceed program price caps. 

I’ll just pause briefly to check whether we’ve got Nick back before I continue.

Nick Morgan:

This slide shows the funding model. On the left-hand side are the sources of funds for service providers and I’ll go through those. 

The first source of funding is the various client budgets. So in line with what I’ve just outlined, providers will bill for services and supports delivered against client budgets. And this may include the individual budgets that may be for ongoing services and/or the short-term restorative services or the end-of-life classification, or the funding tiers I mentioned for assistive technology and home modifications. The second source of funds is the care management fund, that between Susan and I was just described I think, that sits with providers. The third source of funding is any unspent Home Care Package funds held on behalf of a grandfathered Home Care Package client. 

So against all of that group of funding sources, services delivered will be invoiced at prices for each service that’s delivered or for things like assistive technology at cost. Prices will have to be at or below the price caps set by government based on the advice of the Independent Health and Aged Care Pricing Authority. The fourth funding source is participant contributions which Susan will talk about shortly in more detail. And lastly is the thin market grants for eligible providers which again I’ll come to in a sec.

All right. So those first three categories of funding involve invoicing Services Australia. We’ll be providing further details to software vendors and service providers about the specifics of submitting invoices. But it should involve the existing Services Australia channels available to Home Care Package providers today.

Invoices may be submitted up to daily or batched up. And invoices will need to specify by client how many units of services were delivered at what price. Because we now have quarterly budgets, it’s not until the last invoice after the end of the quarter is submitted that a person can confirm what savings they are carrying over into the next quarter. So providers will have a maximum of 60 days to finalise that last invoice for the quarter.

Services Australia processes claims within seven calendar days of receipt of claim and claim processing will be a priority task. And I think the intention is for claims to be actioned by staff as soon as submitted, with payment distributed the day after.

All right. There’ll be some automated checks on invoices submitted such as whether the service is on the service list, whether the price is below the price cap, the provider is registered and so on. And I’m hoping those automated checks mean that the actual payment for a valid invoice can be processed very quickly.

All right. The price caps for services will be set by government for Support at Home from 1 July 2025. These will be informed by advice from the Independent Health and Aged Care Pricing Authority. The price caps will include the full cost of service delivery including administration costs. In Support at Home providers will therefore not be able to charge participants separate administration fees. Providers will be able to charge at or below the set prices and will claim in arrears against a participant’s budget and their provider-based care management account. 

Now IHACPA is currently undertaking a pricing study that will inform their advice on the efficient cap prices for aged care services. I expect to be able to provide you with high-level price caps in around November. These would be at the service-type level. However the more detailed advice on price caps, which will include things like afterhours loadings, any rural and remote loadings and so on, are not expected to be available until around February next year.

I understand how concerned providers are to get their hands on these price caps so they can crunch the numbers for their business planning. And we are just as concerned to ensure that there is a viable market and service continuity for older people on the 1st of July next year. That’s why we ran a survey a couple of months ago to collect information from service providers about the level of services they are currently delivering. And we got around 300 responses from Home Care Package providers across Australia. And we’re going to be modelling the different price scenarios through that data in the coming weeks and months and –

Susan Trainor:

Just to pick up from where Nick has dropped off. We will be modelling different pricing scenarios through that data and comparing the outcome to providers’ current revenue reporting so we can advise government on any transition arrangements that might need to be put in place to support the market.

The other element of the Support at Home funding model is supplementary grants for providers operating in thin markets where price caps are not sufficient. These will be two-year supplementary grants. Eligibility to apply for a grant will be for providers delivering services in MM3 to MM7 locations using the Modified Monash Model of Remoteness. MM3 to MM7 includes large, medium and small rural towns, as well as remote and very remote communities. This would range from places such as Dubbo through to Coober Pedy or those providing specialised services to diverse groups. Providers will need to provide evidence that costs exceed the revenue they could make through the provider service prices. Further guidance and resources will be made available to support eligible providers to apply for the grant.

The timing is a little bit tricky given what Nick has just said about when prices will be available. So we’re just working through that process now.

Nick Morgan:

So Support at Home will operate under a new aged care regulatory model that sets out how the aged care sector will operate in line with the new Aged Care Act. In the new regulatory model universal provider registration will be introduced with six registration categories. Five of these registration categories applying to providers operating in community settings. Category 6 is residential care which includes residential respite.

The categories group service types are based on similar care complexity and risk. And the categories do not prescribe or prevent combinations of services from an individual receiving aged care services. This will be determined through the individual’s support plan.

The registration categories are based on the relative level of risk associated with each service type delivered by providers. This means that registration requirements and related provider obligations and regulatory oversight will be proportionate to the level of risk in each registration category. The Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission will oversee provider registration and renewal.

All existing Home Care Package providers will be deemed into registration categories 1 to 4 which will align with the services they currently deliver. The deeming process will involve a confirmation of this information with all Home Care Package providers and the department will be managing this process. 

Care management is an ongoing expectation of all care providers in order to meet the needs of the older people they support. All new providers under Support at Home from July 2025 must be registered in category 4 as a minimum in order to deliver care management to older Australians. More information on the new regulatory model, including the deeming process can be found on the department’s website.

All right. I think if you’ve still got me I could be on to the last slide. These are two important areas where we are preparing to do further work post July 2025. 

Firstly we are planning to run a small-scale trial to test the option of budget pooling for participants living in group settings, so for example a retirement village or small rural town. The pooled funding trial will test whether it’s feasible to combine some or all of participant budgets in group settings with a single provider to better address their needs.

The department will run an expression-of-interest process to identify a suitable Home Care Package provider group, likely five to 10 providers, to participate in the trial. And the pooled funding will test whether there are opportunities to use funds more flexibly for priority needs across a participant group and opportunities to fund standing service offers for a group of participants who opt in that they might use as needed, so an on-call personal care or daily meals or drop-in service type arrangements. Any participants would have to opt in to participate in the trial with their provider. It would not be imposed on anyone.

We expect that the trial will use a kind of subscription-based model like a gym membership if you like to make this arrangement work. But we’ll be working that through in the coming months.

The second area of work that we are exploring is options for a funding model to ensure Support at Home supports older Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. This funding model could be established post-2027 when the Commonwealth Home Support Program transitions into Support at Home. This is a direct response to concerns raised with us about the importance of flexibility of funding for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community-controlled organisations. We’re currently going out to market for a First Nations supplier to help us do some engagement on options for alternative funding models that could potentially be trialled in 2025, ’26 through the use of CHSP grants.

All right. I’ll stop there. Thank you for listening. Thank you Susan for jumping in as the sound cut out. I’ll hand back over to you to talk about participant contributions. Thanks.

Susan Trainor:

Thank you Nick.

Formally good afternoon everyone. I’m Susan Trainor, the Assistant Secretary of the Funding Operations and Analysis Branch here in the department. 

Before we get into the details of the funding for the new system I’ll run through the current participant contribution system. 

There are three types of fees a person may be asked to pay for home care. First is a non-compulsory basic daily fee which everyone may be asked to pay but currently fewer than 10% of participants are actually paying this fee. The second is an income-tested care fee which only 14% of participants currently pay. And then the third is additional services fees which the participant only pays if the service is not covered by their package budget. 

The income-tested care fee and basic daily fee are fees that are charged regardless of what, if any, services the participant has actually used. In Support at Home, as recommended by the Aged Care Taskforce, contributions will be based on what a person has used, ensuring that participants only pay for services that they actually receive. Older people consistently say that this is their preference. 

The rate of contribution a participant pays will be set as a percentage of the cost of the service. Contributions will vary depending upon the wealth of the participant. To make it easier to understand and reduce the number of means assessments that participants undergo, Support at Home will use the Age Pension means test, not a special aged care test and I’ll come back to this in a moment.

So as recommended by the Aged Care Taskforce, contribution rates will be different for different types of services. There’ll be three service categories. 

The first of this is things that are considered clinical supports such as nursing and allied health which will be fully funded by the government. This means no participant will be asked to pay anything for these services. 

Things that are considered important to support someone’s independence at home will have a moderate contribution. This includes personal care such as showering. Where a person receives the assistive technology or home modification supports that Nick talked about earlier, the contributions for these will be based on the independence percentage rate. 

And then contributions are highest for what we call everyday living items such as domestic assistance or cleaning and gardening. These are things that the government would not ordinarily pay for at any other stage of a person’s life.

We will then use a participant’s Age Pension status to determine the actual contribution percentage. Contribution rates are lowest for full-rate Age Pension recipients who’ll pay a flat rate of 5% for independent services and 17.5% for everyday living services. The percentage contribution that part-pensioners and those who are not pensioners but hold a Commonwealth Seniors Health Card will increase as their income and assets increase. 

Part-pensioners assessment for the Aged Pension will be used to decide their precise percentage contribution towards independence and everyday living. Generally speaking part-pensioners with a higher fortnightly pension rate will have a lower level of contribution to Support at Home, while those receiving only a small amount of pension will have higher contributions. 

As Commonwealth Seniors Health Card holders haven’t gone through the full Age Pension means assessment, they will have a separate means assessment from Services Australia to determine where they fit on the scale, with those generally only just outside Age Pension eligibility paying lower contributions than those close to the cut-off for eligibility for the card.

And finally a ‘no worse off’ principle will apply to people who on the 12th of September 2024 were either receiving a Home Care Package, in the national priority system or who had been assessed as eligible for a Home Care Package. The ‘no worse off’ principle will ensure these participants are no worse off as a result of the reforms. They make the same contributions or lower than they would have under the Home Care Package arrangements. 

For the existing 86% of Home Care Package recipients who do not currently pay an income-tested care fee, this means they will never pay a fee for as long as they get Support at Home. For the 14% of existing Home Care Package recipients who do pay an income-tested care fee, they will pay discounted rates that ensure they do not pay more than they do under the current system.

This protection follows these participants if and when they move to residential care. They will enter residential aged care under the current contribution arrangements unless an individual chooses to opt in to the new program and that’s true regardless of when they enter residential aged care. However if they enter residential aged care after 1 July 2025 the changes to accommodation payments in residential care will still apply to these participants since the accommodation payments are an agreement negotiated between the resident and their provider.

I’ll now I think pass back to Michael for the Q-and-A stage. 

Michael Lye:

Thanks Susan. And thank you all for submitting your questions. We’re going to try and run from questions that have been voted up the most and then we’ll try and also make sure we get some that are from participants. 

So the first question is:

Q:          Does the 10% cap on care management fees apply to existing clients or just new clients entering after July 2025? Most providers currently charge more than this amount, plus a package management fee. The 10% cap will create a significant cash shortfall for most home care providers.

Nick Morgan:

Yeah. Thanks Michael. Can you hear me? 

Michael Lye:

Yes.

Nick Morgan:

All right then. So the answer is that the 10% is expected to apply to all participants, noting that the package management fees will be picked up through prices. So there won’t be a package management fee. That will be picked up through prices which will be fully loaded to include all administration costs.

In our consultations we think a range of the things that people are using care management fees for are scheduling and some other activities that will be captured as administration costs in the prices. So that’s one point.

The second point is that this care management funding will be pooled. And so where someone needs more, a provider can provide more. Where someone needs less, a provider can provide less. It’s not 10% tied to that funding being spent on that individual client. So we think that flexibility will help providers to manage across their cohort using the 10%. 

And then lastly the 10% figure we’re still waiting on getting those prices. But looking at what we think the pricing looks like around care management it’s likely to be at least –

 

Michael Lye:

We’ve lost Nick again. I should say to you everybody that in the event that we don’t get to all questions today we’ll aim to provide responses on our FAQ section on the new Act consultation page. 

I might go to some questions around means testing just while Nick comes back online. The reason I think that we’ve got trouble with Nick’s audio and visual is because we’ve got so many people on the call.

Now granted some of the content’s been covered here. But we’ll try and get to people’s questions in any case even though you might have heard the answer from Susan. 

Q:          Hi. More details on ‘no worse off’ principle after 12th of the ninth ’24 for clients please? Does it mean they don’t have to pay any contributions?

Susan I know you’ve covered some of this but just I think to reinforce some of these points.

Susan Trainor:

Yeah. So what will happen is a person who’s currently not – someone who’s paying or not paying a basic daily fee now is not relevant to consideration of what they will pay under the grandparenting or transitional arrangements. The only thing that will be considered when deciding whether someone needs to pay fees under the future system is whether they’re paying an income-tested care fee. So that’s the people who’ve gone through an assessment of their income under the Home Care Package system. If they are paying that income-tested care fee they will pay transitional rates. Which are going to be set in such a way that no one will be paying any more and many people in fact will be paying less under Support at Home.

Michael Lye:

Thanks Susan. I’ve got Nick joining me here because he’s so frustrated. 

Q:          If clients are not paying – sorry. Can a provider charge a higher price than the capped price and recover that from the client via a client copayment or can they only charge the capped price?

Nick Morgan:

So for a service under Support at Home they can only charge the capped price given that the copayments will be set according to as Susan set out in her presentation. So if there’s a price cap of – and I’m making this up – $100 an hour for a particular service, if it’s a clinical service you can only charge up to $100 an hour. If it’s a non-clinical service then whatever the participant contribution rate applies will be what you can charge a participant, and the subsidy will be calculated as $100 minus that participant’s contribution. So if their contribution is $10, your subsidy would be 90 and your participant contribution would be 10.

Michael Lye:

Great. Thanks Nick. 

I’m going to move back to my most highly-rated questions here.

Q:          When will the promised service list with subsidy amounts be made available?

Nick Morgan:

The list will be made available I’m hoping within the next week or two. So that’s very close and on its way. There’s sort of a list of services, and then there’s also the item list for the Assistive Technology and Home Modification Scheme. Both of those lists are not far away. 

The price caps as I said earlier which are based on the advice we’re getting from IHACPA, the pricing authority, we’re looking at the first cut of prices being available in November. And that’s kind of the subsidy that sits against each item in the list. 

For the assistive technology and home modifications list there are not going to be prices against that. Those items will be just at cost price, whatever it costs to purchase that item. And for items that are in the loan scheme we’ll have a pricing schedule that’s a lot lower to access items through the loans.

Michael Lye:

Thanks Nick. 

Okay. Next question.

Q:          Will care managers need to coordinate purchases of continence aids and equipment et cetera or do we just refer to the new Assistive Technology and Home Modification Scheme? Can we please have more details on how this scheme will work?

Nick Morgan:

Yeah. Under the Assistive Technology and Home Modification Scheme there will be these funding tiers. They typically are going to last for 12 months to purchase a piece of equipment. But we’re also looking at having a kind of ongoing funding amount for things like continence products that are needed on an ongoing basis. That will be a funding amount that a provider invoices against when purchasing those products.

Michael Lye:

Okay. 

The next – it’s kind of a comment but in part a question. 

Q:          Aged care standards being introduced will also likely increase costs for home-care providers as they are significantly more demanding and prescriptive. How is IHACPA ensuring that these additional costs to home-care providers are included in the unit pricing for services?

Nick Morgan:

So IHACPA will be – well IHACPA is doing a costing study with existing providers. I’m sure there are many providers on the line who are engaging with IHACPA and raising some of those points. Part of the work that the department’s doing is also to reduce the cost of some of those regulatory requirements to improve business-to-government computing arrangements and that sort of thing as well. But effectively over time the indexation for the prices and the program overall, the intention is to have an annual review by IHACPA that informs the price increases over time that picks up those sorts of things.

Michael Lye:

Great. Thanks Nick.

The next question is:

Q:          What are the qualifications that will be required to be a care partner?

Nick Morgan:

I think in the slides – maybe I cut out while I was saying it – we know that today providers have a kind of team-based mixed model to deliver care management. They have clinical oversight. But they may also have other staff who are doing other parts of the work in relation to care management or for people with less complex needs. We don’t want to break that model. 

So for someone who’s a clinical care manager we’d expect a clinical qualification. For someone who’s not a clinical manager I think we’re looking at a preferred qualification was the feedback we got when we consulted providers on this, which I think is a Cert IV. At this stage I think because of that team-based approach we were not going to mandate a minimum qualification but have a preferred qualification of Cert IV I think.

Michael Lye:

Okay. 

Next question.

Q:          When do you anticipate releasing a draft Support at Home manual that includes the interaction with CHSP between 2025 and 2027?

Nick Morgan:

So the first step we’ve got over the coming hopefully week is we want to publish a Support at Home handbook. It’s not a manual. It doesn’t go through for a service provider in the level of detail that a manual would. But it brings together all of the things that were in the slides that we went through today, with probably a little more detail into a handbook. So that’s coming within a week. 

The manual I think I might throw to Lezah whose team is looking at all of the work around transition and provider readiness as to where that sits on the timeline.

Lezah Rushton:

Yeah. Good afternoon everybody. So Lezah Rushton, I’m the Assistant Secretary of the Assessment and Home Care Transition Branch. And as Nick said we are looking after a various large range of transition activities to help providers and older people move into the Support at Home Program.

In terms of the program manual it is being drafted as we speak. There will be a specific Support at Home Program manual. But we’re also doing updates to the CHSP manuals as well. So we are working with a sector working group who we will be providing a draft of that manual to hopefully in mid to late October, with a view to having that finalised towards the end of November.

Michael Lye:

Thanks Lezah. 

The next question was:

Q:          Can a transcript of this session be made available to hear the verbal details again?

Yes. We’ll be aiming to make that available to people. 

I’d also just point out that some of these questions have arrived prior to the content being delivered today. And so hence some of these questions may have been answered in the session. But given that they are important to you, we’re trying to cover those nonetheless. So the next question is – well there’s a question about when the service rate is made available to providers. I think Nick’s answered that in the questions already. It’s just a question framed slightly differently. 

Next question.

Q:          What happens if an end-of-life assessed client lives past three months? Will they automatically be eligible for another round of funding?

Nick Morgan:

No. If someone lives past three months we extend it out to 16 weeks so that the funding can continue on for an extra month. But beyond that the person would drop back to their Support at Home classification.

Michael Lye:

Okay. 

Next question.

Q:          How is our admin team going to manage? We’re going to need to manage two financial systems until all clients on the old HCP swap over, if they ever do. Each service type and client has a different percentage of co-contributions, multiple funding pools in their budget. Oh my god.

Look just to make a comment before I throw to the team on this.

Obviously some of the arrangements here are a function of the agreement reached between the government and the opposition. It’s not uncommon when you’re talking about means testing that when change happens that there are grandparenting arrangements which seek to preserve people who are currently in the system or entering the system under the existing rules. That’s a fair thing to do. 

But we acknowledge that it creates complexity. It certainly creates complexity for us in trying to design and manage systems. And we understand that there is some impost as a result for providers. But we all have old people at the forefront of our minds here. And so we’re trying to make a system that makes sense to somebody who’s made decisions, including financial decisions in their life, upon entering the system. And so we’re trying to make sure that that transition is as smooth as possible and as fair as possible for them. 

I don’t know Nick if you wanted to comment about that.

Nick Morgan:

Sure. Yeah. I’m sure Susan will too. But let me just quickly say I do want to make sure there’s not confusion around one point. The Home Care Packages Program per se, we won’t be continuing Home Care Packages running exactly as it does today. Those clients will transition into Support at Home automatically on the same funding amount that they receive in Home Care Packages but it will be run as the Support at Home Program. The invoicing will be the same, the quarterly budgets will work the same way. They will just maintain their Home Care Package budget level rather than getting assigned to something different. And they won’t have to be reassessed or anything to come into the program.

I might throw to Susan. Because I think the other confusion that might be inherent in that question is that when we grandfather the contribution rates for people it might be assumed that we are holding the Home Care Package means-tested care fee as a flat-rate fee. That’s not how it would work. The fees would be collected in the same way for everybody under Support at Home, it’s just at grandfathered rates. 

So I don’t know Susan if you wanted to touch on that.

Susan Trainor:

Yeah. Absolutely. So in terms of the grandparenting for fees, so first of all we are talking about the 14% who pay an income-tested care fee. For 86% of Home Care Package recipients who are moved into Support at Home they’ve been paying a zero-dollar income-tested care fee. Their percentages for all service types in Support at Home would be zero percent. 

For the remainder they wouldn’t continue in a dollar-based fashion. It would be a percentage rate. But the team’s worked really hard to make sure we have transitional percentage rates that are equal to or lower than someone’s current contribution in the Home Care Program. So everyone will have a contribution percentage. There will only be one type of system but there will be different percentages for people who were in the Home Care Program on or before 12th of September 2024.

Michael Lye:

Great. Thanks team.

Q:          What’s the new requirements for monthly statements given the move to quarterly budget?

Nick Morgan:

The monthly statements is basically just to ensure that Support at Home participants are getting a regular statement of the services they’ve received and what level of budget they have remaining throughout the quarter. The monthly statements do not need to be tied to your invoicing cycles. So it may be you’re saying this is your monthly statement for what’s been received, there are some services still outstanding that have not been invoiced yet. That’s not a problem. But it’s just trying to get a regular flow of information from a consumer perspective so they get more than just four reports a year on what’s been delivered.

Michael Lye:

Thanks Nick.

Q:          Is there any provision for those clients who have a cognitive impairment who might decline services due to cost? False economy can occur when clients lack insight. Declining services can lead to presentation at public hospitals.

Nick Morgan:

So I think I understand the question, that we’re concerned about where someone with cognitive decline just stops using services. Every person in Support at Home will have a care partner or there’ll be care management support provided. And that’s exactly the sort of thing that I would expect a care partner to be looking out for and helping to manage that sort of thing..

So it’s part of the service delivery responsibilities I suppose to manage that. In terms of the assessment cognitive, there is a tool that looks at cognition in the assessment which is taken into account in terms of the classification level that a person is assigned.

Michael Lye:

Thanks Nick. 

Now this question I think is a repeat. But I’m going to go through it again because I think there’s probably not enough times we can stress some of the detail here.

For you Susan.

Q:          Re the ‘no worse off’ test, if a customer is not actually paying the basic daily fee now will they still have to pay the percentage contribution to non-clinical services from 1 July 2025? I.e. will the government reduce the amount paid to the provider by the percentage regardless of whether the BDF is being charged by the provider?

Susan Trainor:

Sure. So I think I’ve mentioned before that we’re only looking at the income-tested care fee and not the basic daily fee. 

It’s worth mentioning that I think when we talk about this we’ve got set prices and then we have a percentage that is paid by the participant and the remainder of it is paid for that participant by the government. So for any given participant, the amount that the provider will receive is the fee level. No one will be disadvantaged by the rate of what a person pays or whether they are or are not making personal contributions. The government will cover whatever gap there is between the participant contribution rate and the prescribed fee for that service.

Michael Lye:

Okay.

Q:          Will any funding be available to organisations to support transition to the new system, staff training, systems engineering, policy development, client engagement?

Nick Morgan:

So I mentioned earlier that we are doing some work at the moment around looking at, as the prices come in, what that might mean for the need for transition support for service providers. As part of going back and talking to government about that transition support, we will also be considering some of those other things that were mentioned in the question around whether there’s other supports needed. 

I don’t know Lezah if you had anything more you wanted to add on that one?

Lezah Rushton:

Probably not Nick in terms of funding. Just probably to say that we are developing some very detailed material to help providers through those transition activities, including training material, and we are doing that in partnership with that sector reference working group as well. So you’ll see more on that over the coming months.

Michael Lye:

Thanks. 

The next question is:

Q:          My question is about how the department will ensure that people can access the End-of-Life Pathway as quickly as possible given that wait times for home-based support are typically longer than these people have to live?

Nick Morgan:

Yeah. A good question. And really no point having a three-month End-of-Life Pathway if it takes more than three months to access the support. 

We’re looking to have urgent assessment where needed for someone who’s not in care, a simple approval process for someone who is already in care. And then expedited access to the end-of-life funding in terms of, even if there’s a wait, having a prioritisation system that fast-tracks that end-of-life support.

Michael Lye:

Okay. 

Next question. I think we might have answered this in the presentation but anyway in terms of the way IHACPA is doing their work.

Q:          But the pricing data currently being collected by the department predates the increases in wages from the Fair Work – I’ve just lost my spot – from the Fair Work case for care workers and RNs, as well as the increased compliance cost for the recent changes in governance requirements for boards?

Nick Morgan:

Yeah. Part of their job is uprating all of that information that they’ve collected from service providers for all of those changes. That’s a part of their methodology.

Michael Lye:

Yeah.

Okay. Next question.

Q:          Can you confirm a $15,000 cap on home modifications? If so are there exceptions where clinical justification exists for more expensive modifications, example a level-access bathroom?

Nick Morgan:

I can confirm it’s a $15,000 cap on home modifications. Partly that is a function of how quickly the funding would be exhausted if it was sort of open-ended. On the other hand for assistive technology there is a $15,000 cap. But under prescription a person can access more expensive equipment where needed. There is not an upper cap on that. We don’t think there will be that many people requiring it. So on assistive technology you can go above 15,000 but for home modifications it is capped at 15,000.

Michael Lye:

Great. All right. 

Next question.

Q:          How will the new clients be assessed to enter CHSP or Support at Home when both programs have service types available?

Nick Morgan:

So the single assessment tool that’s been introduced will be used for people coming to get assessed to stay at home. People who under the assessment tool have lower levels of need will be referred to CHSP, with a referral to a provider and/or codes for different service types to access those services. No different to today. And then a person whose scores under the IAT would notionally put them into a higher classification that sits within Support at Home would be referred to Support at Home.

Michael Lye:

Okay. 

Q:          How will the claim process work for service providers and software vendors?

Nick Morgan:

Lezah ...

Lezah Rushton:

Do you want me to take that one Nick?

Nick Morgan:

Good on you Lezah.

Lezah Rushton:

Yeah. Okay. So we’re working with Services Australia at the moment on the development and upgrade of the IT systems to support Support at Home claims processing and payments. As much as possible we will be using the existing payment interfaces that are in place. We will work through some of the – so we’ve got scheduled some tech talks and some software vendor engagements over the coming little while. We will go through some of that detail in terms of what those system changes will look like and how those payment claims interfaces will look.

Michael Lye:

Thanks Lezah. Okay.

Next question.

Q:          Is the Home Care Program provider responsible for collecting the income-based contribution to independence in everyday living services? 

Nick Morgan:

Yes.

Michael Lye:

Someone’s asked:

Q:          When will we have a far more defined list of inclusions and exclusions?

I think Nick’s answered this. Not only Support at Home but for those who will be grandfathered under the current HCP. So I think Nick made the point that everyone will be in Support at Home. While people’s rates might be – their level of support and their contributions might be grandfathered from their existing HCP, everyone will be in the Support at Home Program. 

And I think you said shortly on inclusions and exclusions?

Nick Morgan:

Yeah. I’m hoping within a week, if not two, to have both the – and often the inclusions and exclusions that people are most concerned about are the items that they want to purchase as opposed to people know personal care and domestic assistance and so on is available. So yeah, in the next week or two.

Michael Lye:

All right. I’m going as fast as I can. And at about 3:25 I’ll move into summary.

Q:          But when a person changes home-care providers does the money get transferred to the new provider straight away?

Nick Morgan:

So under Support at Home we do have some arrangements. I probably should be wary about this one because I just can’t recall exactly the details but we have been thinking about that. There’s a bit of a challenge here, right. Because it’s a quarterly budget and you have access to that quarterly budget from the start of the quarter and you can spend all of it in the first three weeks potentially. That’s not ideal. But if that’s what you did or a big chunk of it because you needed it early on and then you change providers and you don’t have very much budget left, there is a challenge around identifying how much budget is left for the provider you switch over to. And so we are trying to come up with some very practical ways for that advice around what’s been invoiced and what hasn’t been invoiced to be made clear to the provider taking you on. But we’ll need to get you more detailed information about that.

Michael Lye:

Okay. 

Just for completeness there’s a question here about care management. And I think the question’s been answered a couple of different ways but just for completeness.

Q:          How will it work to reduce case management fees from 20% to 10% if the care managers will be required to have clinical qualifications such as nursing?

Nick Morgan:

Yeah. So I tried to say this previously but they’re not required to have clinical qualifications. We understand team-based approaches are used. And you’ll have clinicians with clinical oversight and others who are not clinicians and we’re fine with that.

The reduction to 10%, I mean I think I cut out on this last time so I might try and explain it again. But there will be – we believe some of the care management fees that are being levied today are being used for things like scheduling and rostering which will be covered by the administrative loading in prices across all services. That’s one point. 

Two, the care management fund will be pooled and you’ll be able to assign to people who need it as needed. It won’t be that 10% is spent on that person and the next person’s 10% is spent on that person. That will provide flexibility across the client group. 

And then when we look at the indicative prices that we’re expecting, it equates to around about – ranging from one hour a month per person up to around six hours a month per person at the top classification level. Remembering that’s all pooled. That as I say where someone doesn’t need that much, an hour a month or less may even be reasonable for check-ins for people who are travelling well. And then at times when they need more you allocate more to them and less to someone else. So that’s where we’ve landed on care management.

Michael Lye:

Thanks Nick. 

And I think this is the lucky last here.

Q:          Can we charge for cancelled costs? What if the service is cancelled by the client at the last minute or not home when we get there? You mentioned services that they actually receive. There is still a cost to cancel services.

Nick Morgan:

Yeah. I think my intention has always been yes, we just need to make sure it’s picked up in our rules. I think under the NDIS you have a 24-hour – if you cancel within 24 hours you still get billed. I think we should have something along those lines. But we need to settle that at the next level of detail. 

Michael Lye:

Thanks Nick.

All right. Look can I just say that as I said before we’ll endeavour to make sure that on our FAQ section that we kind of cover off on some of the questions we didn’t get to today. Thank you for submitting those. 

And we’re obviously keen to get down further and further into the detail and help support you with the transition. And as the new program details are finalised – and Nick mentioned a few of those things that are coming fairly soon – we’re committed to communicating with the sector and with participants regularly to better prepare for 1 July.

There’s two sessions on the screen there that if you pass your camera over those icons you can get more details on. And so we’re going to continue to try and support you with information as it comes to hand.

We’ll shortly publish obviously the Support at Home handbook and that’ll be available on our website. We’ll foreshadow when it’s coming. And I think that’s enough on how you can access more information. If in doubt watch our website.

Can I just say a big thank you to everybody. I know we’ve had a lot of people and we’ve had a couple of technical issues because of the size of our audience today. Thanks for making the time to join us. Thanks for participating, including asking your questions. There’s an email address if you want to send further questions to us. 

When we finish the webinar today there’ll be a short survey that pops up. It’ll only take around one minute to answer. It’s only three questions. And we would appreciate that because it helps us to improve our webinars over time. Thanks very much for joining us and we’ll see you shortly.

[Closing visual of slide with text saying ‘Thank you’, ‘For more information, you can contact: Email: SAH.implementation@healthgov.au, Website: health.gov.au/our-work/support-at-home’, ‘Visit our website’ with visual of a QR code, ‘agedcareengagement.health.gov.au’]

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