Home care at 60%: does it pass the pub test?

If you were at the pub and told a mate their parent had finally been approved for home care but would only receive 60% of the funding they were assessed to need, what would the reaction be? 

A raised eyebrow would be the polite response. The other reaction doesn’t belong in print. 

Under Support at Home, Interim Packages are fast becoming the norm. While the policy rationale is that more older Australians are receiving funding sooner, the lived reality looks a lot more like rationing. 

Under current settings, new clients are typically expected to remain on Interim funding for around 10 weeks before being “upgraded” to their full Package. We are now starting to hear that some of the earliest Support at Home clients are beginning to receive their full funding – but for most, 60% is the starting point, not the exception. 

Let’s do the numbers. 

Based on our back-of-envelope calculations, we assume an average Package value of $30,000. Hold back 40% of that funding for new approvals and apply it to roughly 120,000 people over the next year – factoring in past quarterly approvals and the Government’s commitment to release 83,000 new Packages this financial year. 

That equates to roughly $277 million in “savings” – savings for Treasury, that is. 

New clients “stoic” on 60% 

On the ground, one operator told us this week that 90% of new clients are accepting Interim Packages simply because they have no choice. 

After months – sometimes years – of waiting, people are stoic. They take what’s offered because declining means being sent to the back of the queue. 

Technically, this is more transparent than the old system, where no one had any idea when full funding might arrive.  

But “more transparent” does not automatically mean fair – or effective. 

Under the previous system, some people received their Package in full, while others waited on lower levels. Now, only the highest-priority cases appear to be receiving 100% upfront, effectively baking the Interim model into the system as the new norm. 

Which raises an important question: 

Would we accept 60% pay from our employer and be told the rest might arrive in 10 weeks? 

And more to the point – does the Government seriously expect providers to deliver safe, viable care on 60% funding? 

Admin adds up 

Operators tell us they are still required to build full care plans – because duty of care doesn’t scale down neatly. That means hours spent with clients and families deciding which services get cut, which risks are allowed, and which supports are deferred. 

Then there’s the admin churn. 

Operators must: 

• explain the 60% funding to the client and negotiate services, 
• adjust the care plan accordingly, and 
• redo paperwork when (or if) full funding arrives after 10 weeks. 

That’s at least three hours – often more – of work per client, conservatively priced at $50 an hour. 

Multiply that across thousands of clients and you’re looking at around $450,000 a week in additional, unfunded administration costs being absorbed by providers – at the same time the Government is banking weekly savings from withheld funding. 

It’s hard to argue that passes any pub test. 

Risks hiding in plain sight 

Funding delays also don’t account for clinical decline while people wait. And they don’t prevent the growing backlog of reassessments when it becomes clear – weeks in – that the initial Package no longer matches the client’s needs. 

Those reassessments mean more paperwork, more delays, and longer periods of under-support. 

We’re hearing growing concern around duty of care, and whether taking on complex clients with only 60% funding is even viable. 

Is there an upside? 

There may be one. 

The shift toward co-contributions for everyday living and independence services is nudging some new clients toward preventative, clinical services like physio, podiatry and nursing. Done properly, this could improve health outcomes in the long run. 

But that upside only works if people can access the right care from day one. 

What we’re seeing instead are missed opportunities: the wrong Package, the wrong mix, and the wrong timing. 

Yes, some support is better than none. And yes, getting people into the system matters. 

But whether that’s fair – or sustainable – is a question the sector, peak bodies and the community should be asking loudly. 

Because if 60% is now considered good enough for Government work, we shouldn’t pretend it passes the pub test.