The assessment is done, the letter has arrived, and you have been approved for Support at Home. So why hasn't anything started yet?
It is one of the most common questions families ask at this stage, and the answer is simply that approval and services starting are two separate steps. Approval and services starting are two separate steps, and there is often a waiting period in between. This guide explains what happens after your aged care assessment: how the waitlist works, what support you can access in the meantime, when reassessments happen, and how your budget can increase if your care needs change.
After your assessment, you receive a Notice of Decision letter from My Aged Care. If you are approved, it confirms the program you are eligible for and includes your support plan, along with a referral code you can share with your chosen provider so they can start organising services once your funding is in place.
Under Support at Home, which replaced Home Care Packages in November 2025, you are assigned one of 8 funding classifications based on the complexity of your needs. Each classification comes with a quarterly budget.
Here is the important part: being approved for a classification does not mean the funding starts immediately. Funding for ongoing services is allocated through the Support at Home Priority System when it becomes available.
Funding for ongoing services is allocated through the Support at Home Priority System, which is designed to allocate funding fairly based on your priority category and the date of approval on your assessment outcome letter.
Your aged care assessment determines your priority category: urgent, high, medium or standard. It is not a simple first come, first served list. Someone assessed as urgent will generally be allocated funding ahead of someone with a standard rating, even if they were approved later.
You only enter the Priority System once you have an approval for Support at Home and are actively seeking care, so it is worth confirming with My Aged Care that your status is up to date.
Recent government reporting suggests that people in the urgent and high categories generally wait around a month or less, while medium and standard categories can wait several months, in some cases around 5 to 8 months. As at mid 2026, more than 100,000 older Australians were waiting for an ongoing Support at Home place, so these timeframes are real, but they are also improving: tens of thousands of new and upgraded places have been released each quarter, and total home care numbers have grown strongly year on year.
Wait times depend on individual circumstances, so treat published figures as a guide rather than a promise. You can check the progress of your application through your My Aged Care Online Account or by calling My Aged Care on 1800 200 422.
Waiting for ongoing funding does not always mean waiting with nothing. Depending on your circumstances, there are several options worth knowing about.
Interim funding. In some circumstances, people waiting for their ongoing classification may be offered interim funding, generally set at a portion of their approved budget (currently around 60 percent). This lets you and your provider prioritise the most critical services while you wait for the full amount. Interim funding is not guaranteed and is generally not offered where the expected wait is short, so ask My Aged Care whether it applies to you.
Short-term pathways. Some Support at Home pathways do not use the waitlist at all. The Restorative Care Pathway and the End-of-Life Pathway are designed for time-sensitive needs, and people approved for them can generally access support without joining the ongoing queue.
The Commonwealth Home Support Programme (CHSP). If you were already receiving CHSP services, or your assessor recommends them, entry-level support such as domestic assistance, meals or transport may help bridge the gap while you wait.
Transition care after hospital. If you are leaving hospital, transition care can provide short-term support while your longer-term arrangements are sorted out.
Veterans’ options. If you hold a DVA card, you may have separate options through Veterans’ Home Care or DVA Community Nursing that sit outside the aged care queue entirely. Our guide to Support at Home and Veterans’ Home Care explains how the two systems fit together.
The waiting period is also a practical window to choose your provider, ask questions and plan how you want to use your budget, so that services can start quickly once your funding is released. You can compare providers on My Aged Care’s Find a Provider tool, or talk to our team about what your first weeks of support could look like.
Your support plan reflects your needs at the time you were assessed. Needs change, and the system is built to respond to that.
You can request a reassessment at any time if your circumstances change. Common triggers include a fall or a new diagnosis, a stay in hospital, a carer becoming unavailable, or simply finding that day-to-day tasks are becoming harder than they were six months ago.
To request one, you can use your My Aged Care Online Account, call My Aged Care on 1800 200 422, or raise it with your provider, who can help you flag the change. A reassessment looks at your current needs and can result in a new classification, a different priority category, or approval for additional types of support.
One thing a reassessment is not: a penalty. Some people put off asking because they worry it could reduce their support. In practice, a reassessment is simply the formal way the system checks that your funding still matches your life.
Under Support at Home, your budget is tied to your classification, so the main way to increase your funding is a reassessment that moves you to a higher classification. If your needs have grown, say from needing help with cleaning and shopping to also needing community nursing or daily personal care, a reassessment is the pathway.
There is also flexibility within your existing budget. You can change your mix of services at any time within your approved plan, and unspent funds can carry over between quarters up to a cap (currently the higher of $1,000 or 10 percent of your quarterly budget), which gives you a small buffer for unexpected needs.
And because budgets are indexed, the dollar amounts attached to each classification are adjusted in July each year.
If you are unsure whether your current classification still fits, a good provider should be honest with you about it. That conversation is part of the job.
Approval is the milestone, not the finish line. After your aged care assessment you will likely wait for ongoing funding, with your priority category shaping how long. There are interim and short-term options that may help in the meantime, reassessments are available whenever your needs change, and a higher classification, budget flexibility and annual indexation are the ways your funding keeps pace with your life.
The system has a lot of moving parts. Your next step does not need to. If you have been approved for Support at Home and want to talk through what happens next, get in touch with our team. We will give you a straight answer about wait times, interim options and how to make your budget work for the life you want to keep living.
For the latest official information, visit My Aged Care or the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing.
Contact Kanda for supportive, practical advice tailored to you and your situation.