New Home Care Packages are only being released when someone on a package passes or enters residential aged care. With 87,597 older Australians waiting for the level of Home Care they have been assessed as needing as of 31 March 2025, providers are bearing the brunt.
Darren Birbeck, CEO of Not For Profit South Australian aged care provider Resthaven, told The Weekly SOURCE the Albanese Government's rationing of Home Care Packages requires constant reallocation of resources to different areas of the business while trying to deliver a seamless service for clients.
"As a large provider of services, Resthaven is in a fortunate position to be able to reallocate resources to different areas depending on the demand," he said. "However, this remains a constant balancing act – particularly in ensuring workloads remain manageable for individual workers and ensuing there is no impact on service delivery for clients."
To manage the "ebb and flow" of clients, Resthaven trains home support workers so they are able to perform a variety of tasks.
"Within some of the regional areas, particularly more remote locations, there are more challenges in providing this ready workforce," Darren said.
Janelle Heyse, State Manager – Carinity Community Services, the Queensland Not For Profit, told The Weekly SOURCE, "The entire industry is facing challenges, especially when clients exit and are not being replaced with new home care package clients."
A spokesperson for the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing told The Weekly SOURCE packages are only released as customers exit the system – they either die or move into residential aged care.
Janelle said Carinity Community Services has seen a "significant decrease in the release of Home Care Packages this year".
Sarah Newman, Chief Operations Officer Home Care at BaptistCare, said: "The release of new HCPs has been agonisingly slow for the last 13 months, leading to the ballooning of the waiting list," she said.
BaptistCare scaled up its workforce to meet the promised release of 83,000 starting 1 July this year, so has spare workforce capacity since the release was delayed by four months until 1 November 2025.
Yvonne Timson, CEO of Western Australian Not For Profit home care provider Community Vision, said that with no Home Care Packages being released, their CHSP services are at capacity, as older Australians are forced onto lower levels of care than they have been assessed as needing.
"We can't bring people onto the CHSP because we're not moving people out of the CHSP," she stated.
Consumers are also waiting longer for assessments – Janelle said they have seen consumers waiting up to nine months to be assessed – and more assessments are being conducted by phone, Darren said.
In June, Senator David Pocock led a coalition of 10 Independent Senators and MPs in writing to the Minister for Aged Care Sam Rae asking for an additional 20,000 Home Care Packages to be released. However, the Minister knocked back the request, and Senator Pocock received backing from the Coalition, Greens and Independents to launch a Senate Inquiry into the delays in releasing Home Care Packages, including the impacts on providers and their workforces.
