While you wait

Help you can get while you wait

If your mum or dad has been approved for Support at Home and nothing has started, you are not stuck with nothing. There is funded help that sits outside the aged care system entirely, and some of it you can only get because the package has not started yet. Most of it turns on a question nobody has thought to ask you.

Every figure on this page checked 28 July 2026.

We check each of these against the government's own page and date it. Some of it we could not confirm, and we say so on the card where that is true. Treat this as a good place to start the phone call, not the last word.

Four questions

Each one opens up a different set of help. If you are not sure of an answer, say so — we will still show you what is behind it.

What is their postcode?

Half of what is available depends on which state they live in.

Did they ever serve in the defence force?

Veterans have a separate care system that does not use the same queue at all.

Do they have private health insurance?

Cover they are already paying for may include nursing at home, physio or podiatry they have never claimed.

Do they have a Pensioner Concession Card?

A large number of concessions key off this card and never look at aged care at all.

How solid is this list?

We built it by reading the eligibility rules for every program on it, and we quote those rules wherever we can. Every figure carries the page it came from and the date we checked.

Even so, please treat it as our best effort rather than the final word:

Rules and amounts change, sometimes quietly. Centrelink payments move in March and September. Most other schemes change on 1 July.
Some programs do not publish how they treat people who are approved and waiting. Where we could not confirm it, the card says so instead of guessing.
Eligibility usually turns on personal circumstances we cannot see from here, so a program that looks right may not be, and the reverse.
We are not a government service. We cannot approve anything, and nothing here is financial, legal or medical advice.

Use it to work out what is worth asking about, then check with the program itself before you count on it. Every card carries the phone number or the official page.

Last checked 28 July 2026. If you spot something out of date, we would genuinely like to know.

We could not place that postcode. Check it and try again.