Older Australians assessed as needing basic help at home are routinely issued Commonwealth Home Support Programme (CHSP) referral codes for services they often cannot access. This gap between approval and reality is frustrating families, stressing providers, and undermining the preventive intent of aged care.
Adrian Morgan, General Manager of home care provider Flexi Care Inc, called the situation “very strange”.
When it was put to him that assessors appear to issue CHSP codes despite knowing services are hard to obtain, he replied:
“It is a very strange situation. But if the person is assessed as eligible, the assessor really does need to give them the code. The problem is really that the CHSP is underfunded. It has not had its funding increased in terms of the number of places substantially for more than a decade, and yet the older population has grown dramatically during that time, so demand is being pushed up.”
Morgan noted that government caps exacerbate the issue. Providers cannot deliver more services than they are funded or approved to provide.
An anonymous aged care case manager with expertise in service allocation and referrals confirmed the pattern from the frontline:
“People are getting referral codes for services that do not exist. There are no providers doing those services any more, or that funding type, because it is the lower level. You have Support at Home and all the higher paying options on top of that.
“I have people constantly ringing me for Commonwealth Home Support funding. They will give you the codes, but there are no services out there. People are not getting the services, but assessors are handing out these codes knowing full well that the services are not available.”
CHSP is a block-funded programme. The government provides grants to providers for specific service types and geographic areas, but each provider has limited capacity.
A referral code confirms that a person has been assessed as eligible and lists the approved services. However, it does not guarantee that a local provider has an available place or the workforce to deliver those services.
Availability varies widely by location and service type. In many areas, providers have closed their books to new CHSP clients or maintain long waiting lists, particularly for domestic assistance, gardening, allied health, transport, and cottage respite. Meals on Wheels is one of the few services that remains relatively accessible in many areas.
The Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) 2026 performance audit of the $3.1 billion CHSP delivered a sobering assessment.
In 2024-25, 838,694 people received CHSP services. However, the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing lacks robust assurance that services are delivered effectively, to eligible people, according to need, and in a timely manner.
More than half of surveyed clients reported difficulty accessing services, with one quarter describing it as very difficult. The main barriers were local providers not being available or not accepting new clients.
Approximately 113,000 clients had not completed formal aged care assessments, a legacy issue. Monitoring of supply, demand, and the full client journey remains limited.
A Senate inquiry into the planned transition of CHSP into Support at Home recommended extending funding, retaining CHSP as a separate block-funded programme, and conducting an independent cost-benefit analysis. The inquiry highlighted risks to preventive care and thin markets if the transition proceeds without addressing these issues.
CHSP remains grant funded with tight caps, while Support at Home uses individualised budgets. Many providers logically prioritise the latter. The lack of substantial increases in CHSP places for more than a decade, despite demographic growth, has created the current mismatch.
CHSP is designed as the entry-level safety net, providing low-intensity supports that help people remain independent and delay or avoid more costly residential care.
When referral codes prove unusable, carers lose respite, minor needs escalate, and families face private costs or crisis-driven decisions.
The human cost is real. Families report emotional strain and delayed support during vulnerable periods. One consequence is increased pressure towards higher cost options or premature entry into residential aged care.
Practical steps include contacting multiple providers, prioritising the most urgent referral code, exploring flexible respite options where possible, and considering reassessment for Support at Home where appropriate.
System-wide improvements could include real-time provider capacity information at the point of referral, targeted surge funding for high-demand services, and stronger departmental monitoring, as recommended by the ANAO.
CHSP’s block-funded, flexible model has strengths for entry-level and preventive care that an individualised system may struggle to replicate at scale. As Australia’s population ages, allowing this foundational layer to weaken risks higher overall costs and poorer outcomes for older Australians.
It’s not the assessors fault the system is broken – their forced algorithm facilitates these referrals and besides that and the alternative is just more people on waitlists for SAH – CHSP is also supposed to support people while they wait for their elusive SAH funding to kick in…
It feels like the Dept are effectively sabotaging CHSP to adhere to their agenda of having SAH as their flagship solution to all aged care services.
CHSP remains the most high-value “bang-for-buck” government funded program in this country and yet we have been on our knees begging for recognition since Packages while all the focus has been on the implementation of the SAH debacle. If SAH is the ‘flagship’ then the iceberg that is Aged Care in Australia was bigger than the idiots at the bridge realised, even though they were warned…..
The complexity, delays, and other carefully designed in cost limitations on SAH have been well documented. We encountered the severe limitations on the far far easier to use CHSP from the start. There appears to be an insouciant ‘all is well’ from the Minister in that there are systems in place (the fact that they are imposing heavily on the vulnerable users on SAH a degree of complexity and limitations is carefully never examined- I dont wonder why!).
The cold hard fact is that the government is doing the absolute minimum for the over 65s and blocking access by any platform or people who might be able to challenge it or give realistic advice on systems functioning.
These are not accidents: these are entirely by design.
We are way part the time when an independent Expert Review Panel drawn from the many phenomenally capable elders, but with zero connections to any Party and no links to the older persons bodies compromised by government funding.
The people are there
From my professional experience, a person issued CHSP referral codes who does not already have Support at Home approval awaiting allocation has very little chance of securing services in many areas.
It would also be valuable to examine how existing CHSP funding is currently being distributed. Some clients receive multiple services and several hours of support each week – at times resembling the level of assistance available under a higher-level Support at Home classification – while newly approved people cannot access even one hour of domestic assistance per fortnight or one hour of gardening per month.
Another important question is: how many people have been issued CHSP referral codes but have been unable to commence any service at all? These people may appear in government data as assessed and connected to CHSP, when in reality they are receiving nothing.
My mother was recently approved for CHSP and understandably believed the referral codes meant support was now available. After contacting multiple providers, however, we found that none had capacity to accept her. The approval has therefore made no practical difference.
Our only apparent option is to request another assessment, despite there being no material change in her circumstances, in the hope that she may qualify for Support at Home Level 1 and become more likely to be accepted by a provider. She is willing to pay the required contribution and is only seeking minimal assistance to remain independent.
Issuing referral codes without tracking whether people can actually use them risks creating the appearance that support has been provided when it has not. Eligibility is not the same as access, and access should be the measure that matters.
The comment in this article…When it was put to him that assessors appear to issue CHSP codes despite knowing services are hard to obtain… appears to be ‘blaming’ assessors for providing a code that it is likely, cannot be used. They are doing their job, assessing someones eligibilty for assistance. I was an ACAT assessor pre Support at Home and I, as did my colleagues, found it difficult to have conversations with older persons and their supporters, that we can provide codes but accessing services will be challenging if not impossible. So, this is not a new problem but things need to change. CHSP appears to be almost ignored by the government at present as there are so many (too many) competing issues vying for attention in Aged Care at present.