The latest on Home Care Packages – the good, the bad, and the waiting list!

The government announced further funding as part of its response to the Royal Commission into Aged Care, including funding more Home Care Packages. The latest quarterly results are in, and we take a look at their score card.

The November report on Home Care Packages shows about 204K older Australians are currently receiving the support of Home Care Package funding, as of September 2021.

The newly released figures mark a 4.3% increase since June this year and a 25.3% increase since September last year, which is a jump of over 41,000 more people funded by a Home Care Package.

It’s good news that more people are receiving the much-need funding to remain well and happy at home, including the 19.5K people that entered a Home Care package for the first time during the September 2021 quarter.

There were 34.4K approvals in total during in the September 2021 quarter, and there were 46.8K Home Care Packages released in the September 2021 quarter (at an average of 3,600 per week).

The bad news is that during the same period, there were a further 51.7K people who were seeking a Home Care Package, who had not yet been offered one.

Of those people, 98.3% (50,798) had been approved for support through the Commonwealth Home Support Programme (CHSP), which provides limited support.

Waiting times showed some improvement, with the estimated wait time for a Level 2, 3 and 4 dropping to 6-9 months, which was down from the previous wait times of 9-12 months.

Estimated wait time for people entering the NPS on 31 October 2021, by HCP level:

Learn more: View the full quarterly results here.