Is physiotherapy free under Support at Home?

Yes. Under Support at Home, physiotherapy is classified as clinical care, and clinical care carries no participant contribution. The government pays for it. That has been true since Support at Home replaced Home Care Packages on 1 November 2025.

The reason so many families ask is that the main My Aged Care page lists clinical supports as “nursing care, occupational therapy, podiatry and help with showering or dressing” and leaves physiotherapy off that list. So if you have gone looking on Mum’s behalf and come away unsure, that is why.

Where the government says it

Two federal pages state it directly. The Department of Health’s participant contributions page sets out what a participant pays for each category of service:

Participants will make: no contribution for clinical support services, such as nursing, physiotherapy and personal care; moderate contributions for independence services, such as remedial massage, respite care, transport and support to attend appointments; the highest contributions for everyday living services, such as cleaning, gardening, shopping and meal preparation.

And My Aged Care’s page on contributions says the same thing in plainer words:

You will make no contribution for clinical support services such as nursing, physiotherapy and personal care. This is fully funded by the government.

Personal care is new to that sentence. It moved into clinical supports on 1 October 2026. Physiotherapy has been there since the program began.

What this means for your parent

Mum has a quarterly Support at Home budget, and every service draws it down: cleaning, transport, nursing, physiotherapy alike. Separately, she pays contributions toward some of them, worked out from her income and assets. Physiotherapy is not one of them.

So physiotherapy sits differently in that budget from most services. An hour of cleaning draws it down and costs her the highest contribution rate. An hour of physiotherapy draws it down and costs her nothing.

How often should she be seen?

Usually weekly. Strength and balance are trained rather than stored, and they fade within a few weeks once the training stops. A short burst of visits followed by nothing tends to give the gains back.

Weekly is also what makes the rest of the work possible. Each visit reviews what she managed at home, progresses or eases the exercises depending on how she went, and checks where she is against the goals she set. You get a quarterly update, formal or informal, and Jimmy on email whenever you want him in between. Stretch the visits out and the program tends to sit still.

The right frequency still depends on her goals and on the size of her quarterly budget, which is set at her assessment. Jimmy sets the frequency with you on the first call, against her goals and what the budget holds.

What to do with this

• Ask her provider or care partner to put physiotherapy in the support plan. It has to be in the plan to be funded, and it is not usually offered unprompted. What a home visit involves is worth a read first.
• You do not need a doctor’s referral to see a physiotherapist. A GP is useful to have in the loop, but nothing waits on one.
• You can choose the physiotherapist. Support at Home funds the service; it does not oblige you to accept whoever the provider sends first. Two questions worth asking before you agree: who is coming, and will it be the same person each week. A provider that rosters whoever is free cannot promise you the same physiotherapist, so nobody builds a picture of how she is actually going.
• If your mother or father has just come out of hospital, ask about the Restorative Care Pathway. Up to 16 weeks of intensive allied health, funded separately from her Support at Home budget, and no waiting list.
• Ask what happens between visits. A program nobody follows up on rarely changes anything. If she has NDIS or private cover as well, fees and funding covers how those sit together.

If what you want is a physiotherapist who writes down what she’s working toward, changes the program as she changes, and keeps her doing the exercises on the days nobody is there, email info@jxphysio.com.au and ask Jimmy about a visit.

Still working out whether it’s worth starting? The two-minute falls-risk check asks the same eight questions we ask at a first assessment.