What's Included in a Support at Home Budget
What's Included in Your Support at Home Budget? Personal Care, Nursing, Domestic Assistance and More
A Support at Home budget can be spent across six main service types: personal care, nursing care, allied health, domestic assistance, social support, and transport assistance. What each of these actually covers day to day is often less clear than the category names suggest, so here's a plain-English breakdown of each one.
Personal Care
Covers everyday support with tasks like showering, dressing, grooming, and mobility assistance, helping you maintain dignity and independence at home. It can also include continence management and help getting in and out of bed safely. This is usually one of the most regularly used parts of a Support at Home budget, especially at higher classification levels.
Nursing Care
A clinical service delivered by a qualified nurse. It includes wound care, medication management, catheter care, and ongoing monitoring of health conditions. Clinical services like nursing are always fully government-funded, meaning there's no participant contribution regardless of income or assets, unlike some other service categories.
Allied Health
Allied health covers clinical support from professionals such as physiotherapists, occupational therapists, podiatrists, dietitians, and speech pathologists. It's commonly used to improve mobility, manage pain, prevent falls, or support recovery after a hospital stay. Like nursing, allied health sits within the clinical services category, so it's always fully government-funded regardless of income or assets.
Domestic Assistance
Covers everyday household tasks that keep a home safe and comfortable, such as cleaning, laundry, and help with meal preparation. It's designed to take the pressure off jobs that become harder to manage independently over time, without taking over your home entirely.
Social Support
Helps you stay connected to your community and reduce isolation. It can include companionship, help attending social groups or activities, and accompanied outings. This is often paired with transport assistance, since getting to social activities is usually part of the same need.
Transport Assistance
Helps you get to medical appointments, community activities, or social outings when driving or public transport is no longer easy or safe. It's commonly used alongside social support and personal care, since these three often work together to help someone stay active and engaged outside the home.
Does every level get access to all six categories?
Yes. Every Support at Home classification, from Level 1 to Level 8, has access to the same overall service list. What changes between levels is the size of the quarterly budget, not which categories of service you're allowed to use. A Level 2 recipient and a Level 8 recipient can both access nursing, allied health, personal care, domestic assistance, social support, and transport; the higher level simply comes with more funding to draw on.
Do I pay anything for these services?
It depends on the category. Clinical services, which include both nursing and allied health, have no participant contribution regardless of income or assets. Independence services (like personal care and social support) and everyday living services (like domestic assistance) may involve a contribution based on your financial circumstances, which My Aged Care will confirm as part of your assessment.
Getting the right mix for your budget
Because these six categories often overlap in practice, such as transport getting you to the social group that social support connects you with, or allied health working alongside nursing after a hospital stay, it helps to work with a provider who can build a care plan around your specific routine and goals, rather than applying a one-size-fits-all approach.
If you have an approved Support at Home package, InCare Supports can help match personal care, nursing, domestic assistance, social support, and allied health services to your funding level.
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