Using Support at Home for physiotherapy: a plain-English guide
Support at Homereplaced Home Care Packages on 1 November 2025 — and buried in the changeover is a detail most families still haven’t noticed: physiotherapy is now fully government-funded within the budget, with nothing out of pocket. Here are the three questions families keep asking us about the new program, answered in plain English.
The good news first: physio is now “clinical care”
Under Support at Home, services are grouped into categories — and physiotherapy sits in clinical care, alongside nursing. Clinical supports carry no participant contribution: they are fully government-funded within your budget when they’re part of your care plan. Under the old Home Care Package rules, many families paid income-tested fees that effectively made physio feel like a discretionary extra. That disincentive is gone.
In practice: if strength, balance or mobility work is in Mum’s care plan, the physiotherapy itself doesn’t cost her anything out of pocket. The budget is still finite — visits draw down on the quarterly amount — but there’s no co-payment on top.
What happened to existing Home Care Packages?
They moved across automatically. If your parent had a package (or was on the waiting list, or had been assessed as eligible) as at the changeover, they were transitioned to Support at Home without a reassessment, under a “no worse off” guarantee — nobody pays more for the care they were already receiving. Their care level and services carried over.
The main structural change you’ll notice is the budget rhythm: Support at Home works on quarterly budgets across eight classification levels, rather than the old annual package amounts. That actually suits physiotherapy well, because good physio is naturally block-shaped — more on that below.
How to get physiotherapy started
- Check the care plan.Physiotherapy needs to be identified in the care plan to be funded. If it isn’t there yet, ask the care partner or provider to add it — a falls history, weakness after a hospital stay, or declining mobility are all solid clinical grounds.
- Choose the physio.You’re not locked to whoever your provider suggests. Families can nominate a physiotherapy service — that’s usually where we come in — and the provider engages us directly.
- We invoice the provider, not you. Once set up, the paperwork disappears from your side. You book the visits; the invoicing happens provider-to-provider.
Making the budget go further
Because clinical care draws on a finite quarterly budget, the honest strategy is a focused block, then a lighter rhythm: weekly visits for six to eight weeks to build strength and confidence, then spacing out to fortnightly or monthly maintenance with a home program in between. A physio who wants to see your mother twice a week forever isn’t writing her a plan — they’re writing themselves an annuity. It’s fair to ask any provider (us included) how and when visit frequency will step down.
Questions about your family’s exact situation? Our fees & funding pagecovers the other doors (NDIS, private), or call and ask — it’s a two-minute conversation, not a sales pitch.