Federal aged care minister Sam Rae wants to hear from Commonwealth Home Support Program providers considering quitting the scheme, promising the uncertainty that has plagued the sector is now over.
Federal aged care minister Sam Rae has urged CHSP providers considering withdrawing from the program – including those that have already given notice – to approach the government before making any final decisions.
Speaking to providers at the CHSP national conference in Melbourne this morning, Mr Rae said last week’s decision to extend CHSP grant agreements until 2029 and retain it as a standalone program had removed much of the policy uncertainty that had driven providers to reconsider their future.
“If your organisation has been considering withdrawing from CHSP or has given notice, please come and talk to us before you finalise anything or move ahead at all,” Mr Rae said.
“The uncertainty that drove a lot of these decisions is now gone.
“Your contracts will continue without interruption [until] 2029. The door’s open, and I’d rather have that conversation and explore how we can support you in this evolving system than read about it in the newspaper later.”
Asked whether providers considering major service changes would receive an individual response, Mr Rae said they should contact their CHSP manager “straight away”.
“I well understand that the lack of certainty that’s been in place over the last couple of years has led to providers needing to consider difficult decisions in the sort of fog of policy law, if you like,” he said.
“What we’ve now sought to do is to lift that fog, provide us all this certainty.”
The government announced last week that CHSP would continue beyond 2027 rather than being folded into Support at Home, with existing grant agreements extended until June 2029.
Mr Rae told the conference the government had accepted providers’ arguments that CHSP performed a fundamentally different role to Support at Home and that block funding was critical to its operation, particularly in small, rural and remote communities and for specialist services.
“You told us that folding it into a program built for something else would break the parts of CHSP that work the best. And on reflection, we agree with you,” he said.
More than 830,000 Australians were eligible for CHSP services, he said, with almost 40% living outside major cities.
“In a lot of those communities, you’re not the best option available. You’re the only option available,” Mr Rae said.
Funding model under scrutiny
But Mr Rae acknowledged extending the program did not resolve its underlying problems, including growing demand and pressure on provider finances.
The Department of Health, Disability and Ageing will write to every CHSP provider outlining the process and timing for extending grant agreements, while consultation on the long-term design of entry-level home care will begin within “the next month or so”.
That consultation will examine a sustainable funding model, unmet demand around Australia and how providers can be supported to continue delivering services.
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Mr Rae also asked providers to give the government detailed data about their actual delivery costs.
“Bring us the real numbers on what it costs you to deliver in each of your unique communities and with your workforce,” he said.
“Once we have that, we’ll be able to plot a system that works for decades to come.”
Asked specifically about funding failing to keep pace with demand and costs, Mr Rae acknowledged providers were facing two problems: people needing services whom providers could not accommodate, and clients they could not afford to service but continued supporting regardless.
That was putting providers under sustainability pressure, he said.
“Part of the work that we need to do over the coming months is to work out what a sustainable funding model looks like,” Mr Rae said.
He said the government also wanted to improve the transition between CHSP and Support at Home, despite abandoning the previous plan to combine the two.
Some older people were declining Support at Home services because they preferred their existing CHSP services, creating bottlenecks, while services including cottage respite and group social support were poorly suited to individualised package-based funding, he said.
“These are services that we can’t afford to lose because it just gets too hard to work out a funding model to deliver them sustainably.”
Mr Rae said the consultation would be open to the whole sector, with the next 12 months a “critical period” for consultation and policy design.
“We won’t get it all right the first crack,” he said, but the aim was to move towards a position where the sector had confidence about the direction of CHSP policy.
The CHSP national conference continues in Melbourne tomorrow, Tuesday 25 August.