15/05/2025
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Support At Home
To: The Hon Sam Rae MP, Minister for Aged Care
Date: 14 May 2025
From: The Invox Crew on behalf of providers facing a policy driven disaster
What You Need to Know - the Looming Crisis in Support at Home
Congratulations on your new role. You’ve just inherited one of the most complex, high-stakes, and, let’s be honest, poorly managed transitions in the recent history of government policy.
On July 1, 2025 - less than two months from now - the Support at Home program goes live, theoretically streamlining in-home care and promising to deliver more flexible, person-centred services.
In reality, the rollout is shaping up to be a masterclass in how not to implement major change. Providers are being asked to stay the course in a major storm of missing rules, unclear pricing, unreleased systems, and vague promises of “guidance coming soon.”
Here’s where things stand with the reform, including the problems that may not be highlighted in your more official briefings:
Reform Status Update (as of May 2025)
As the incoming Minister you can quickly assess that this reform is nowhere near ready to implement on 1 July. If the implementation goes ahead it will create a crisis for older people, providers and for you as the incoming responsible Minister.
Immediate Risks and Urgent Issues
Unfinalised Rules
As of today, we’re still working from draft rules. Providers are being told to build new service agreements, set up systems, and prepare their workforce - all based on regulations that haven’t been finalised.
We’re still missing:
Confirmed pricing rules and aligned statements,
Mandatory inclusions for service agreements and when they must be re-signed,
Core guidance documents (like Assistive Technology & Home Modifications and End-of-Life pathways),
And consumer protection details.
Your new Department has said that while consultations are ongoing, the final rules ‘probably won’t change much’. So, why pretend it's a consultation at all?
Providers now face a lose-lose choice: act now and risk being wrong, or wait and risk not being ready. Neither option protects the older people we’re here to support.
Workforce Strategy: Hope and Prayer
One of the great Support at Home assumptions is that there’s a ready, trained workforce just waiting to spring into action.
The reality?
The sector is already short on staff,
Those in place are still wrapping their heads around the current system,
The rules are long, confusing, and still subject to change,
And nobody has time to translate all that into something an 89-year-old can understand at intake.
The reform assumes capacity and capability that simply doesn’t exist, it’s a chimera.
Financial Viability – Price Uncertainty Now, Price Caps Later
This year, providers can set their own prices. In theory, that sounds empowering. In practice, it’s chaos.
Meanwhile, consumers are being told prices will be capped from 1 July 2026, making it harder for providers to explain costs or plan ahead.
Add to that:
A 10% cap on care management (an effective and significant cut),
Inconsistent details on what’s billable or how it’s monitored,
And a system that still hasn’t been tested in the real world.
Providers are being asked to lock in service agreements, stand up new models, and prepare for a capped environment, all before the pricing model has been finalised or released. That’s not financial sustainability, that’s incredibly poor policy practice.
IT Systems That Don’t Exist Yet
Support at Home is supposed to be digital-first. There’s just one problem: the digital part doesn’t exist.
The payment system is still under wraps. No test environment. No timeline. No guidance.
Providers are being asked to prep their teams, retrain staff, and redesign workflows without access to the core systems that underpin the whole model. It’s like being told to fly a plane that hasn’t been built yet (and where have we heard that metaphor before?).
Regulation Pile-On
And while all that’s happening, providers are also dealing with:
The new Aged Care Quality Standards,
The incoming new Aged Care Act,
New compliance and reporting obligations,
And talk of outcome-based payments on the horizon.
Time to Rethink
Providers are being pushed into a legal and ethical corner. Keep participants on current contracts and risk non-compliance after 1 July, or move them early under draft rules that could still change. Either way, older Australians are the ones caught in the middle.
As sector legal experts Russell Kennedy noted this week, transitioning participants without a finalised policy and regulatory framework could put them at unnecessary risk and remove the protections they currently rely on.
This isn’t just a policy misstep. It’s a real-time threat to service continuity, provider survival, and the credibility of the entire reform process. It’s an avalanche of change, much of it unsequenced and unfunded. It’s a crisis that only the Minister has the power to prevent.
You’ve inherited a mess. But there’s still time to course-correct, if action is taken now.
Recommended Urgent Actions:
1. Announce a Staggered Start
Let providers onboard gradually. A staggered start would reduce chaos, increase safety, and allow the sector to adjust in real time.
2. Set a Clear Deadline for Final Rules
Confirm and publish the final rules - including pricing, agreements, and service definitions - by a hard deadline. Enough with the ‘coming soon’.
3. Fund a National Provider Readiness Package
Grants for IT, training, care management systems, and participant communications. This is especially critical for smaller and regional providers. And please, spare us the offensive ‘we offered everyone $10k’ line.
4. Publish a National Implementation Timeline
A clear, public roadmap for when systems go live, when payments start, when staff onboarding is expected, and who’s responsible for what. Most importantly, stick to it.
5. Release Interoperability Standards Now
Software vendors are stuck in limbo. Publish technical specs and set a national baseline for system compatibility to avoid a patchwork mess.
6. Provide a Billing & Payment Sandbox
Let providers trial invoices, test transactions, and model payments in a safe test environment before go-live. This would prevent early chaos.
7. Launch a Consumer Communication Campaign
Providers can’t carry this alone. Launch a national campaign, provide translated materials, and set up a helpline. Confusion is already spreading.
8. Appoint a Public Implementation Leader
We need a single, visible leader (think: Support at Home Commissioner) with operational clout and public accountability. Not just a program manager.
Rebuild Trust
Support at Home has the potential to be a major step forward. But the way it’s being rolled out? That’s the real risk. You have a brief window of opportunity to fix this Minister and the power to get it done.
This isn’t just about timelines and templates. It’s about trust. Trust from providers who’ve held the system together this far. Trust from older Australians who’ve heard it all before. And trust in the government to get it right this time.
Roland Naufal
Roland has built (and at times threatened) his career by being outspoken about things that matter. He has over three decades of experience – from aged care CEO and Age Friendly Cities expert to the founder of DSC, Australia’s best known NDIS educators. This led him to ask the question: if radical honesty worked for Australia’s disability sector, then why not aged care, too? And here we are, folks.
Paul Sadler
Few people have as much experience in the aged care sector as Paul. 35 years, to be exact. He’s been a national and state CEO of aged care industry associations, CEO of a major aged care provider, and influencer of ageing policy, disability and community care programs for both national and state governments. He actually enjoys staying on top of the detail and is always ready to share his wisdom and insights (which comes in kind of handy).
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The Support at Home Sh*tstorm
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