At the Invox CHSP National Conference 2026 at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) this week, the mood was both glass half full and glass half empty. Australia’s largest and most impactful part of the aged care system, the Commonwealth Home Support Program (CHSP), is here to stay for at least another three years, but beyond that the future is murky.
For CHSP providers in the room and on the stage, the momentary good news also brought with it a new challenge: what parts of CHSP should be carried forward, and what can be added in to create a more holistic service offering?
An invitation from Minister Sam Rae
Minister for Aged Care and Seniors, Sam Rae, made a last minute appearance on the tail of the government’s announcement that CHSP will be extended until 30 June 2029, not merged with Support at Home (SaH) like what was originally planned.
While there’s been significant push back on the merge from the sector, Minister Rae said the government has been listening.
“You told us that CHSP’s entry-level care does a different job for a different group of people,” he reflected. “Block funding is what makes it work, particularly in small communities. And you told us that folding it into a program built for something else would break the parts of CHSP that work the best. Well – we agree with you.”
While that acknowledgement received nods from around the room, the real question wasn’t about the program’s value – it’s what happens next.
“The extension until 2029 will stop organisations having to make decisions in the dark,” Minister Rae affirmed, “and gives us all the time to design the next phase properly, and together.”
Community consultation will begin in the next month or so, according to Minister Rae, to plan the future of CHSP. The focus areas will be sustainable funding, unmet demand, workforce support, and simplifying navigation.
Once consultation opens, providers are encouraged to bring real cost data from their communities and workforces to the table. Similarly, Minister Rae asked providers considering withdrawing from CHSP to reach out to his office and they’ll get an individualised response.
But how could CHSP be redesigned?
Robert Fitzgerald, Age Discrimination Commissioner at the Australian Human Rights Commission, was crystal clear in the role that CHSP plays in Australian life.
“CHSP is more than services,” he explained. “It is in fact the glue that holds society together, or part thereof. You are part of creating and restoring and maintaining the social capital of Australia.”
Fitzgerald outlined four redesign principles for providers to consider in the reimagining of CHSP in the looming government consultation period:
- Meet older people where and how they live: Locally, in community, not “build it and they’ll come”
- Integrated service provision: Minimal siloed streams, maximum simplicity and flexibility of entry
- Community-based and locally governed: Local government understands communities best; volunteers add social capital
- Block funding as the primary funding model: Good for providers and government within a constrained environment.
“I suspect that in relation to CHSP,” he offers, “we can, in fact, do it slightly different from what’s going to be Support at Home, and certainly much more different than what is required in relation to residential aged care.”
The great divide between CHSP and Support at Home
Dustin Pham (Brotherhood of St Laurence), Samantha Edmonds (OPAN), and Kirsty Mackay (Home Assist Community Services) spoke with Paul Sadler, echoing a similar sentiment about the complexity, cost, and confusion of Support at Home.
In their communities, CHSP is trusted, familiar, and simple: funding is straightforward, and providers and workers are known by their clients. With Support at Home, however, funding is retrospective; providers must claim it, not just deliver the service. The addition of Services Australia adds paperwork and clients receive inconsistent letters on what they’re eligible for – plus, many providers themselves struggle to explain the program clearly.
In one example, a large provider offered to transition 167 CHSP clients to SaH between November 2025 and May 2026, but all stayed on CHSP. This can have real consequences, such as:
- As people’s clinical needs change, they don’t have access to the right level of care
- New clients can’t access CHSP because existing clients aren’t moving off it, and
- Rising cost of living pressures are pushing people further into poverty so they can’t afford the SaH contributions.
When asked about what an integrated aged care system could look like, Mackay argued for a single point of entry. A client tells their story once and the information builds from there, so the transition to SaH from CHSP should be a system-level action, not a burden for the client to manage.
Where to from here?
As we wait to see when the CHSP consultation period will open, the same concerns that have been rumbling through the sector about CHSP still ring true. Rising costs, thin margins, a burnt out workforce, and reform implementation – the desire for change is strong, but so too is the recognition of the long road ahead.
