The 2025 Home Care reforms - rebalancing care today, redefining care for tomorrow

The introduction of the Support at Home program in July 2025 marks a pivotal shift in the delivery of aged care in the community. While the reform is welcome, its success will depend entirely on how service providers implement it. This cannot be treated as a compliance exercise but rather as a meaningful rebalancing of priorities and practice.

Over the past decade, the Home Care Packages system has drifted. Funding has increasingly gone to what is familiar and visible, such as domestic tasks like house cleaning, gardening, and shopping, rather than to supports that maintain health, manage risk, or prevent decline.

These services are not without value, but their dominance in care plans has come at the cost of clinical responsiveness. Older people living at home have too often gone without timely access to allied health, nursing, mental health support, or early intervention for functional loss. The Royal Commission made this clear - home care is not working when it fails to evolve with a person’s changing needs.

It is not enough to restructure funding. Providers must now adopt a new way of thinking in which the entire purpose of in-home care is redefined. The 2025 model offers quarterly budgets, capped pricing, and a single, streamlined assessment process. However, these changes are only a foundation. What matters is how organisations use them to deliver care that is personalised, preventive, and clinically informed.

It is also important to recognise that the misalignment of care was not solely driven by providers. In many cases, domestic supports were delivered in response to consumer requests. These preferences were shaped by what felt manageable or immediately helpful, rather than what was necessary for long-term wellbeing.

As we transition to the new model, this is a moment to recalibrate not only services but also expectations. Providers must take on the responsibility of educating older Australians and their families about what high-quality, person-centred care truly means. This includes guiding clients away from comfort-first planning and towards health-first outcomes. That is, towards services that keep them mobile, well-nourished, mentally well, and connected to the community.

This is where the strengthened Aged Care Quality Standards matter. The revised Standard 1 and Standard 5 make it clear that service providers must actively monitor and respond to change. Care is not a fixed plan; it is a living and adaptive process. Providers must train their teams to identify subtle shifts in health, cognition, or behaviour. They must be able to escalate support when function begins to decline. They must see the person behind the plan and adjust support accordingly.

This is not just about today. The reforms offer a blueprint for what home care can become in the next fifteen years; an integrated, flexible, community-based model that prevents hospitalisation, extends independence, and delivers real dignity in ageing. However, we will not arrive at this future by delivering more of the same under a different funding arrangement. We will only achieve it if we invest now in clinical literacy across the workforce, in multidisciplinary partnerships, in the smarter use of digital tools and assistive technologies, and in a culture of continual re-evaluation.

To the providers preparing for this transition, this is your opportunity to lead. Do not wait for the sector to catch up. Begin recalibrating your service models now. Revisit your approach to care planning. Build capacity in your staff to see beyond the task. Ensure your systems track change, not just service delivery. Engage your clients in conversations about the future, not only the present. And do not let pricing reform be your ceiling; make it your foundation.

The Commission gave us a clear vision. Older Australians want to remain at home, supported in ways that preserve their agency, meet their health needs, and connect them meaningfully to life. The 2025 reforms bring us closer to that vision. However, the evolution of home care does not stop in July. It begins there. The question is whether we will rise to meet it.