Home Care Package physiotherapy: what it costs now
Home Care Packages stopped on 1 November 2025. If your parent had one, she is on Support at Home now, on a transitioned classification that funds the same amount her package did. The change that matters for physiotherapy: it is classified as clinical care, and clinical care carries no participant contribution. She pays nothing toward it.
Does Mum still have a Home Care Package?
Not under that name. Packages were moved across on 1 November 2025 without a reassessment. The Department of Health’s About Support at Home page sets out the structure as 8 funding classifications for ongoing services, plus “4 transitioned Home Care Package classifications to provide an equivalent level of funding for those who transitioned to Support at Home”. She sits on one of those four. Note that the guarantee is about funding rather than service volume: the dollars are equivalent, and what they buy now depends on the contribution rates and the care management deduction below.
Her contributions were protected separately, under what the government calls the no worse off principle. Anyone receiving or approved for a Home Care Package on or before 12 September 2024 keeps grandfathered rates. If she was assessed as paying an income-tested care fee as at 31 October 2025 she pays the same or less now. If she was assessed as not paying one, she will never be asked to pay contributions under Support at Home. The participant contributions page puts the second half like this:
If they were assessed as not having to pay an income-tested care fee as at 31 October 2025, they will never be asked to pay contributions under Support at Home.
The other change you will notice is the rhythm. Support at Home runs on quarterly budgets rather than the old annual package amount, so the number you plan against resets four times a year. Separately, her provider has to make direct contact with her or her registered supporter at least once a month, which is the review cycle rather than the quarter.
What does physiotherapy cost her now?
Nothing out of pocket. Contribution rates are set per service type, and physiotherapy sits in clinical care with nursing. The contributions page puts the three categories side by side:
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.
Under the old package, physiotherapy and cleaning came out of the same pot and the income-tested care fee sat on top of the lot. Now the rate is worked out service by service, and physiotherapy’s is zero. The budget is still finite and every visit draws it down, but there is no co-payment on top of it.
Personal care joined the same category on 1 October 2026, so showering and dressing now cost her nothing out of pocket either.
How do you get physiotherapy started?
- Get it into the support plan. Physiotherapy has to be named in the plan to be funded, and it is rarely offered unprompted. A falls history, weakness after a hospital stay, or mobility that has been slipping are all solid clinical grounds to put to the care partner or provider.
- Choose the physiotherapist yourself.You are not locked to whoever the provider suggests first. Families can nominate a service, and the provider engages them directly. You do not need a doctor’s referral either.
- The invoice goes to the provider, not to you. Once it is set up, the paperwork leaves your side of the table.
If she has just come out of hospital, ask instead about the Restorative Care Pathway — up to 16 weeks of intensive allied health, funded separately from her quarterly budget, with no waiting list.
How many visits does the quarterly budget hold?
Fewer than the headline figure suggests. For ongoing services, 10% is deducted from each quarterly budget to fund care management, which the funding page states plainly. So plan against 90% of the number on the letter.
What makes the rest go further is whether each visit does any work. For an older person, a visit that repeats last week’s exercises has spent the budget and moved nothing. A visit that checks what she managed at home, progresses the program and marks off where she is against her goals has bought something.
That depends on who is coming. A provider that rosters whoever is free cannot promise you the same physiotherapist, so each visit may start with somebody working out what the last one did. The same physiotherapist every visit already knows what your parent managed last week, and spends the session progressing the program rather than re-establishing it.
So: ask how the program is meant to change over the next six weeks, and how they will know whether it is working. A service that measures something can answer that. You can nominate the physiotherapist yourself if the answer is not good enough.
Questions about your family’s exact situation? Is physiotherapy free under Support at Home? takes the contribution question apart with the government wording, and fees and funding covers the other doors (NDIS, private). Or email info@jxphysio.com.au and ask Jimmy what her plan would need to say.