Aged Care Registration FAQ: 33 Questions Answered

The Aged Care Act 2024 started on 1 November 2025 and replaced the previous aged care laws. It puts the rights of older people at the centre of aged care, introduces a Statement of Rights and creates a single registration system for providers of government-funded aged care.

Yes, if you deliver government-funded aged care. Under the new Act, funded aged care services must be delivered by a provider registered with the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission. This includes Support at Home, residential care and CHSP. Existing CHSP providers were deemed registered when the new Act began on 1 November 2025; the later move of CHSP into Support at Home is a separate change.

The Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission. It assesses applications, decides which registration categories you are approved for, can add conditions and monitors providers once they are registered.

Existing government-funded providers were “deemed” into the new registration categories on 1 November 2025, based on the services they were approved or funded to deliver. Approved providers that had claimed no subsidy in the previous 12 months and had no active services were not deemed.

Yes. Both organisations and individuals can apply. The Commission looks at whether you are suitable and have the capacity and capability to deliver the services in the categories you apply for.

Standard registration is renewed every 3 years. The Commission can shorten or extend your registration period depending on your compliance history, and it invites you to renew before your registration ends.

Yes. Fees apply to registration applications and may apply to variations and related audits. Check the Commission’s current fee schedule before you apply – we include this in your registration plan.

Yes. You can apply to vary your registration to add categories. Adding category 4, 5 or 6 requires an audit against the strengthened Quality Standards, and fees may apply.

1. Home and community services. 2. Assistive technology and home modifications. 3. Advisory and support services. 4. Personal care and care support in the home or community (including respite). 5. Nursing and transition care. 6. Residential care (including respite).

Allied health and therapy, personal care, nutrition, therapeutic services for independent living, home or community general respite, community cottage respite, care management and restorative care management.

Category 5 covers nursing care and assistance with transition care. Category 6 covers residential care: residential accommodation, everyday living, clinical care and non-clinical care.

They cover lower-risk services such as domestic assistance, meals and transport (category 1), assistive technology and home modifications (category 2) and advisory and support services such as social support (category 3). They are not audited against the strengthened Quality Standards, but you must still meet registration requirements and provider obligations.

Yes. Most providers register in several categories. You must meet the requirements and obligations of every category you hold.

There are 7: Standard 1 The Individual, Standard 2 The Organisation, Standard 3 The Care and Services, Standard 4 The Environment, Standard 5 Clinical Care, Standard 6 Food and Nutrition and Standard 7 The Residential Community. They came into effect with the new Act.

Standards 1 to 4 apply to categories 4, 5 and 6. Standard 5 applies to categories 5 and 6, and only Outcome 5.1 (Clinical Governance) applies to category 4 care management and restorative care management. Standards 6 and 7 apply to category 6 (residential care) only.

Categories 4, 5 and 6. The Commission audits you against the strengthened Quality Standards before it will register you in those categories.

Auditors check that your governance, policies, procedures, records and day-to-day practice meet the strengthened Quality Standards for your categories, and they speak with your management and staff. We run a mock audit first so there are no surprises.

Audits also apply when you renew registration in, or extend your registration into, categories 4, 5 or 6.

Yes. The Commission can add conditions to manage risks to older people, gives each provider a supervision status and monitors providers under its Supervision Model.

Some conditions apply to all providers, including having systems that support the rights of older people, continuous improvement, the Aged Care Code of Conduct, incident management and complaints handling. Other obligations depend on your categories.

It sets out what older people can expect from government-funded aged care, including the right to make their own decisions about their lives. Providers must act consistently with it and be able to show they understand it.

Each aged care worker and responsible person needs either a police certificate less than 3 years old or an NDIS Worker Screening Clearance. A statutory declaration is also needed if the person lived overseas as a citizen or permanent resident after turning 16, or starts work while a check is pending. A new worker can only start before the result if they have applied for the check, made the statutory declaration and are appropriately supervised while they have access to older people. This does not apply to existing workers whose police certificate has expired: they need a new certificate. This includes volunteers, contractors and agency staff. Some people are not covered, such as occasional tradespeople, practitioners the provider has not contracted, and directly supervised work-experience students. The offences that rule a person out also differ for CHSP providers. See the Department of Health worker screening guidance for the full rules.

7 years from the day the record is made. Records must include each person’s name, date of birth, address, their police certificate or NDIS clearance, any statutory declaration and who checked the documents.

Anyone with authority over executive decisions, such as the CEO, board members, executive managers and directors of nursing. Responsible persons have screening requirements too.

Yes. If you use associated providers (subcontractors), you remain responsible for the quality, safety and compliance of their services and must give the Commission information about them.

Support at Home replaced Home Care Packages and Short-Term Restorative Care on 1 November 2025. Each participant has a single Support at Home provider. The Commonwealth Home Support Programme (CHSP) will move to Support at Home no earlier than 1 July 2027.

Ongoing services are funded through 8 classifications with quarterly budgets, from $2,752.50 (level 1) to $20,034.28 (level 8) per quarter (rates current from 1 July 2026, indexed each July). Check the latest amounts on the Department of Health website. There are also short-term pathways, including the Restorative Care Pathway and the End-of-Life Pathway.

10% of each participant’s quarterly budget is set aside for care management.

You must register in category 4 with the Care management service type (audit required), plus the categories that cover your other services: personal care also sits in category 4, nursing in category 5 (audit required), and services such as domestic assistance, meals or transport in category 1. See our Support at Home registration guide.

Usually much easier than starting from scratch. Governance, incident management, complaints and many other systems overlap, and an NDIS Worker Screening Clearance is accepted for aged care. We run a gap assessment against the aged care Quality Standards and fill the gaps. See our NDIS registration services.

Policies and procedures for registration, forms and templates for record-keeping, a consumer handbook, a worker handbook, a user guide for the pack and a registration FAQ – ready to tailor to your organisation.

Yes. We do gap assessments, internal (mock) audits, staff training on your new processes and support during the Commission’s audit. Learn more about our aged care registration and audit support.

Book a free consultation by calling 1300 790 742 or contacting us online. We confirm your registration categories, explain the audit requirements and give you a fixed-price quote. Read more on our aged care registration page.