For years, many Home Care Package holders quietly banked part of their funding, sometimes tens of thousands of dollars, as a buffer against harder days ahead. When Support at Home replaced the old program last November, the biggest question in kitchens across the country was simple: what happens to our savings? The answer is genuinely good news, with some rules worth knowing. Here’s the plain-language guide.
Your Old Funds Are Safe
If you had unspent Home Care Package funds when the transition happened, you kept them. They carried over into Support at Home, they follow you if you change providers, and, importantly, no carryover limit applies to that legacy money. It remains yours to use.
The rules for using it have a specific order, though. For everyday services, you draw down your new quarterly Support at Home budget first, with legacy funds available once a quarter’s budget is exhausted. For assistive technology and home modifications, it flips: your old unspent funds are used first, before the new AT-HM scheme funding kicks in. Knowing that order helps you plan bigger purchases like equipment or home modifications sensibly.
The New Money Works Differently
Support at Home budgets arrive quarterly (July, October, January and April), and the new funds don’t accumulate the way the old ones did: you can carry over only up to $1,000 or 10 per cent of your quarterly budget, whichever is greater, into the next quarter. The era of banking large new surpluses is over, by design, the system wants funding used for care, not saved.
“Unspent funds are there to support your wellbeing, safety, and independence at home,” as provider Catholic Healthcare puts it.
If you’re consistently underspending your quarterly budget, that’s a signal worth acting on, either you’re missing out on support that would genuinely help, or your classification needs a review.
The July Change That Protects Your Money
Since 1 July, government price caps apply to every service on the Support at Home list, and they must include the full cost of delivery, meaning providers can no longer add separate entry, exit or administration fees, and care management is capped at 10 per cent of your quarterly budget. Translation: at least 90 cents of every dollar must reach actual services.
This is the moment to read your quarterly statement closely. Check what you were charged against the caps, question any legacy-style fees, and remember that comparing providers just became much easier now that pricing is standardised. Your budget details are on the My Aged Care budget page, and the full funding classifications are on the Department of Health’s website.
Practical Moves for Families
Three things worth doing this month: find out exactly how much legacy funding is sitting in the account (it’s on the statement, and many families have never checked), plan any assistive technology or home modification purchases with the spend-order rules in mind, and review whether the quarterly budget is actually being used, because under-use now has a cost that quiet saving never did.
The Bottom Line
The transition honoured the savings families built up, which was far from guaranteed, but the philosophy has changed underneath: the new system funds care as you need it, not savings for someday. The families who do best under Support at Home will be the ones who spend deliberately, check their statements, and treat those legacy funds as what they are, a one-time buffer worth using well.
Epik Wire covers aged care funding in plain language for families. Subscribe to our newsletter to stay informed.
