The median wait for home care services has doubled to 245 days

Corrected 4 October 2026. This story said the first official wait-time figures with Support at Home in them would arrive in next January’s Report on Government Services. That was wrong when we published. The Department of Health, Disability and Ageing had already released the first quarterly Aged Care Act 2024 Wait Times Report on 12 May 2026, covering 1 November 2025 to 31 March 2026, and its Support at Home program data report for January to March 2026, published 31 May 2026, gave estimated waits for ongoing funding as at 31 March 2026: within one month for urgent priority, one to two months for high, six to seven months for medium and seven to eight months for standard.

Updated 4 October 2026. The department’s second Wait Times Report, published 11 August 2026, gives a median of 297 days from applying through My Aged Care to ongoing Support at Home services starting, for people who started between 1 April and 30 June 2026, against a revised 344 days for 1 November 2025 to 31 March 2026. That clock starts at application, not approval, and the report says its measure is not directly comparable with the Report on Government Services figures below. Separately, the department announced on 21 August 2026 that Commonwealth Home Support Program grant funding will be extended to 30 June 2029. The standfirst’s “last financial year” now reads “in 2024-25”, the year the figures cover; the text below is as published on 18 July.

Updated 19 October 2026. The tip on interim help said the Commonwealth Home Support Programme would run until at least mid-2027 and could help while a package is pending. Its funding now runs to 30 June 2029, and the department’s Aged Care Assessment Manual, version 8.4, published on 19 October, sets out what interim help covers while someone waits for Support at Home funding and what it does not, and treats new participants and current CHSP clients differently. The tip now says so.

Updated 17 October 2026. The paragraph on what these numbers do and do not say about Support at Home still said the first official Support at Home wait-time figures would arrive in next January’s report. It now says they were published by the department on 12 May 2026, with a second report on 11 August 2026, in line with the correction above.

Where the time goes: the three stages

Getting help at home has three waits stacked end to end, and the public numbers measure each:

• Waiting to be assessed. In 2024-25 the median wait for a community-based assessment was 43 days from registration, and one in ten people waited 192 days or more. (Assessments arranged in hospital happen almost immediately: a median of one day.)
• Waiting for a package to be assigned. Once approved, the median wait to be assigned a funded package was 204 days in 2024-25, up from 78 days the year before. This queue, not paperwork, is the heart of the blow-out: approval says you need care; assignment is when the funding exists.
• Waiting for services to start. From approval all the way to a provider actually delivering services: a median of 245 days, up from 118.

Who gets seen faster

The system does triage. People assessed as high priority had a median wait of 12 days to package assignment and 40 days to services starting, figures that have stayed short even as the general queue lengthened. The gap between 40 days and 245 days is the practical meaning of the priority classification, which makes it worth asking about directly: if circumstances have worsened since assessment (a fall, a carer no longer coping, a hospital stay), a reassessment of priority is a legitimate thing to request, and hospital-arranged assessments run on an entirely different clock.

The residential side, for comparison: for people entering permanent residential care within a year of approval, the median elapsed time was 71 days. Across all entries, the overall median wait to enter residential care was 162 days in 2024-25, near its ten-year high (163 days in 2020-21, versus 84 days in 2015-16).

What these numbers do and do not say about Support at Home

An honesty note that most coverage of these figures skips: the 2024-25 year ended on 30 June 2025, four months before Support at Home replaced the Home Care Packages program on 1 November 2025. So the 245-day median is the queue the old program built and the new program inherited, not a verdict on the new program. Official wait times covering Support at Home were already out when this story ran: the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing published them in its quarterly Aged Care Act 2024 Wait Times Report on 12 May 2026, and a second report followed on 11 August 2026 (both are set out in the notes above). They start the clock at application, not approval, so they cannot be read straight against the 245-day median, but they are the official measure to watch for whether the redesign moves the queue. Separately, the consumer peak OPAN reported in March 2026 that its advocates were still seeing lengthy assessment and reassessment wait times, which is an attributed observation from the people taking the calls, not yet a dataset. The Government’s own accountability reviewer has warned about what long waits do: pushing people toward residential care they did not want.

While you wait

• Ask where you are in the queue. My Aged Care can tell you your approval date, priority category and assignment status; keep the reference number from the approval letter handy.
• Raise changed circumstances. Priority is not fixed; if needs have escalated, say so and ask for reassessment.
• Use the advocates. OPAN’s advocacy service is free, independent and funded for exactly this; the Government expanded its funding in May 2026.
• Interim help exists. The Commonwealth Home Support Programme runs separately and is funded to 30 June 2029. The department’s Aged Care Assessment Manual, version 8.4, says new participants waiting for Support at Home funding may be approved CHSP services on an interim basis until their Support at Home services commence. For them that excludes equipment, products and home modifications, which come only through the Support at Home assistive technology and home modifications scheme once its funding is allocated. Someone already receiving CHSP keeps the services they are approved for, equipment and home adjustments included, while they wait. The assessment service can advise on it.

Primary sources

How this piece was made. Researched and written by AI systems, under editorial rules a human publisher sets, from the 5 primary sources below. One quotation was checked by script, word for word, against the copy of its source we saved. How The Long View works.

1. Productivity Commission, Report on Government Services 2026, Part F section 14: Aged care services (Part F PDF), released 29 January 2026.
2. OPAN media release, 6 March 2026 (advocates’ reports of assessment wait times).
3. Department of Health, Disability and Ageing, 20 May 2026 (expanded OPAN advocacy funding; CHSP status).
4. Department of Health, Disability and Ageing, Support at Home (read 25 August 2026): that the Support at Home program replaced the Home Care Packages Program and the Short-Term Restorative Care Programme on 1 November 2025, and that the Commonwealth Home Support Program will transition no earlier than 1 July 2027.
5. Department of Health, Disability and Ageing, Aged Care Assessment Manual, version 8.4 (publication page), published 19 October 2026, read the same day: section 6.5 (CHSP funded to 30 June 2029) and section 6.5.5, table 29 (CHSP services while waiting for Support at Home funding).

Spotted an error? The correction form is on our tips page; we check every correction against the cited sources and log the outcome here.