For several years, aged care policy has been heading in one direction: towards a single in-home care program. The theory was simple enough. Merge the Commonwealth Home Support Program (CHSP) into Support at Home (SaH), create one system, and everyone would live happily ever after.
The Senate Community Affairs References Committee has now taken a long look at that proposition and reached a rather different conclusion.
In a unanimous report released in June 2026, the Committee recommended that CHSP be retained as a separate, block-funded program and not transitioned into Support at Home. For the CHSP Alliance, this represents a significant and welcome shift in the national conversation about the future of aged care.
The inquiry heard evidence from more than 130 submissions and multiple public hearings. What emerged was a picture of CHSP as Australia’s largest and most widely used aged care program, supporting more than 800,000 older people through over 1,300 providers. Witnesses consistently described CHSP as the foundation of the aged care system: affordable, locally responsive, preventative and deeply embedded in communities.
The Committee noted that CHSP enables older people to remain safely at home, delays entry into more intensive forms of care and helps reduce pressure on hospitals and residential aged care. It also heard evidence that CHSP achieves these outcomes at a fraction of the cost of higher-level aged care programs. One submission highlighted that CHSP supports around 60 per cent of aged care recipients while consuming less than 10 per cent of government aged care expenditure.
Importantly, the inquiry was not asked to determine whether CHSP is perfect. It is not. Witnesses described funding pressures, growing demand, workforce shortages and service gaps in some regions. The Committee acknowledged that CHSP requires reform and investment. What it did not accept was the proposition that folding CHSP into Support at Home would solve those problems.
“Indeed, much of the evidence pointed in the opposite direction.”
The report expressed concern about the implementation of Support at Home, including waiting lists, affordability issues and access barriers. The Committee noted that many stakeholders had little confidence that the new program was ready to absorb a service supporting almost one million older Australians.
As a result, the Committee recommended extending CHSP funding for a further three years beyond July 2027 to allow time for proper consultation, co-design and evaluation of Support at Home and the Single Assessment System before any future decisions are made.
The recommendations closely align with positions advocated by the CHSP Alliance. In particular, the Committee called for an independent cost-benefit analysis comparing CHSP with other aged care programs, a formal consultation and co-design process on CHSP’s future, and crucially, retention of CHSP as a stand-alone block-funded program.
The Committee also recommended abolishing the controversial $15,000 lifetime cap in Support at Home on home modifications and removing funding and time restrictions attached to the End-of-Life Pathway, recognising concerns raised by providers, consumers and advocates.
For the CHSP Alliance, the report represents more than a policy win. It reflects growing recognition that primary aged care deserves its own identity, funding model and purpose. Rather than viewing CHSP as a legacy program waiting to be absorbed into something newer and shinier, the inquiry recognised it as an essential part of the aged care system in its own right.
As the Alliance noted in its response, the Senate heard compelling evidence that Support at Home is not designed for the type of preventative, community-based and low-intensity services that CHSP provides. The Alliance has welcomed the Committee’s unanimous recommendation and is now calling on the Government to formally abandon the proposed amalgamation and commence a genuine co-design process for the future of CHSP.
After years of uncertainty, the message from the Senate is clear. Reform CHSP by all means. Modernise it. Invest in it. Strengthen it. But before dismantling the largest and most cost-effective part of the aged care system, it might be worth asking whether it is the program that needs fixing in the first place.
