How to Switch Your Support at Home Provider (Without Losing Your Unspent Funds)

Yes. You can change Support at Home providers at any time, for any reason. You do not need permission. You do not need to justify the decision to My Aged Care or to your current provider. You do not have to prove the current provider did something wrong.

Under the Aged Care Act 2024, providers have a continuity-of-care duty when a participant leaves. That includes releasing your care records and care notes to the new provider within 28 days, finalising your budget within the required window, and not charging an exit fee. If a current provider tells you there's an exit fee, it is not a Support at Home exit fee (which the Act prohibits); it can only be a separate contractual matter you should query in writing.

The one thing you cannot do is switch to a provider that is not registered under Support at Home. All Support at Home providers must be registered with the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission. The Find a Provider tool on My Aged Care lists everyone currently registered.

Not everything travels with you automatically. Some things do, some you need to actively re-request.

What follows you automatically:

• Your classification level (1 through 8). No new assessment is needed. If you were on Level 5 with the old provider, you start with the new provider on Level 5.
• Your quarterly budget for the current quarter and every quarter going forward.
• Government-held unspent funds. These sit with Services Australia, not the provider, and are available to the new provider immediately once the referral is activated.
• Provider-held unspent contributions (money you paid the old provider that they hadn't yet spent on services). These are finalised within 70 days of your exit date and either refunded to you or transferred to the new provider, depending on the arrangement.

What you must re-request or re-establish:

• Care notes and service history. The new provider will request these from the old provider under the 28-day continuity-of-care rule. You don't need to chase this yourself, but confirm with the new provider that they've received them within the first month.
• AT-HM approvals (Assistive Technology and Home Modifications). If an AT-HM item has been approved but not yet delivered, the approval itself is valid regardless of provider, but you may need to re-share the approval documentation with the new provider so they can arrange delivery.
• Restorative Care Pathway or End-of-Life Pathway status. If either applies to your parent, tell the new provider on day one and provide the documentation. These pathways are participant-attached, not provider-attached, but the new provider needs to know they exist.
• Direct-debit arrangements for the participant contribution. You will set these up fresh with the new provider.
• Your service agreement. A new one is signed with the new provider. Read it carefully, especially the sections on notice periods (yes, they can set their own for a future move), out-of-pocket rates, and how brokered services are handled.

The order matters. If you give notice before you have a new provider lined up, you risk a gap in care. If you activate the referral code before you have a service agreement, the new provider can't start. Here is the sequence that actually works.

1. Compare providers before you move. Use the Wayly Provider Price Checker or the My Aged Care Find a Provider tool. Prices vary meaningfully for identical services (cleaning at $75/hour with one provider, $110/hour with another, for the same care plan). At the same lifetime cap and quarterly budget, that is real money.

2. Contact your shortlisted new provider. Ask for a quote for the same care plan, confirmed prices in writing, their notice-period requirements when a client leaves them (in case you ever need to switch again), and their earliest available start date.

3. Reactivate the referral code. Call My Aged Care on 1800 200 422 or log into your My Aged Care online account and reactivate the "reactivating home care services code." This tells the system you're seeking a new provider. My Aged Care will issue the code to the new provider you nominate. Note: a CHSP referral code cannot be reactivated; only a home care code can. If your parent was on the Commonwealth Home Support Programme before Support at Home, ring 1800 200 422 to work out the pathway.

4. Sign the new provider's service agreement. Before you give notice to the current provider. This locks in the start date with the new provider so there is no gap.

5. Give notice to the current provider. In writing. Reference the exit date agreed with the new provider. Most current providers have a notice-period requirement in their service agreement (commonly 14 days, sometimes 4 weeks). If you need to move faster than the notice period, ask the current provider to waive it in writing; many will.

6. Confirm the transfer. Between the two exit and start dates, confirm with the new provider that they have received your care records, your AT-HM approvals (if any), and any restorative or end-of-life pathway status. Confirm with My Aged Care that the classification and quarterly budget have transferred.

7. Check the first statement carefully. The first statement from the new provider is the one most likely to contain teething errors. Line-check it against the care plan. If anything looks off, our Statement Decoder will spot common issues in about 60 seconds.

This is the piece that most families worry about, and it's the one most provider blogs are inconsistent on. Some say 60 days. Some say 70 days. Services Australia's guidance to providers uses 70 days as the outer limit.

Here is how it actually works.

Government-held unspent funds (the part of your quarterly budget the government hadn't yet released to a provider) are held by Services Australia. They move to the new provider immediately once the referral code activation goes through. There is no 70-day window on this money.

Provider-held unspent contributions (money you paid the current provider that they hadn't yet spent on services) are what the 70-day rule applies to. Providers have up to 70 days from your exit date to process the return, submit their final claims for the quarter, and either refund you or transfer the balance to the new provider. In practice, most providers complete it faster; 70 days is the outer limit under the Aged Care Act 2024, not the target. If day 71 comes and you haven't seen the money, that's when you escalate.

If you don't see the return by day 70, first ring your former provider's finance team in writing (email is fine; you want a paper trail). If they don't respond within a week, escalate to the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission on 1800 951 822. Include your exit date, the amount you're expecting back, and every attempt you've made to contact the provider.

Support at Home budgets are released quarterly, in July, October, January and April. You are allowed to switch at any point in a quarter, but the timing has a small financial consequence.

Switching at the start of a quarter means the full new quarterly budget follows you cleanly to the new provider, unspent funds are cleanly assigned to one provider or the other, and the quarterly rollover cap (the greater of $1,000 or 10% of the quarterly budget) is straightforward to calculate.

Switching mid-quarter means the current provider claims the services they delivered up to your exit date, and the new provider draws against the remaining quarterly budget from your start date onwards. This works fine, but there is one gotcha: any unspent funds above the rollover cap do not carry forward to the next quarter. If you exit mid-quarter with a large unspent balance because the current provider under-delivered, some of it may be lost to the cap.

Practical rule: if you can wait until the end of a quarter to switch, do. If you can't (because care quality has become urgent), don't. The rollover cap loss is usually smaller than the cost of another two months with a provider that isn't working.

A gap in care is the single most common regret we hear from families who've switched. It's also the easiest thing to prevent, if you follow two rules.

Rule 1: sign with the new provider before you give notice. Not "provisionally agreed." Not "verbally agreed." A signed service agreement with a start date in it.

Rule 2: overlap the exit and start dates by one day if the new provider allows. Some do; some don't. Ask. A one-day overlap means the first visit from the new provider happens on the last day of your notice period with the old one, and there is genuinely no gap.

Before your exit date, run through this checklist:

• New provider service agreement signed and dated.
• Referral code reactivated with My Aged Care.
• Written notice given to current provider, with the agreed exit date.
• Current provider has acknowledged the notice in writing.
• New provider has confirmed they will request your care records under the 28-day rule.
• Any AT-HM approvals have been shared with the new provider.
• Restorative Care Pathway or End-of-Life Pathway status (if applicable) has been shared with the new provider.
• Direct debit for the participant contribution has been cancelled with the current provider and set up with the new one.
• First visit with the new provider is scheduled.
• Diary entry for day 70 to check that any provider-held unspent contributions have been finalised.

If more than one family member is involved in the switch (siblings, spouse, participant's own decisions), the Wayly Family Coordinator gives you a shared thread and an audit log of who agreed to what and when. This isn't a nice-to-have; it's how you avoid the "I thought you'd told the new provider about the pension letter" argument that ruins a switch.

If a Support at Home participant does not enter a new service agreement within four consecutive quarters since last receiving a service, ongoing funding can be withdrawn. This is designed to reclaim funding from people who effectively left the program, not to penalise anyone doing a straightforward switch.

In practice, it means: don't give notice to your current provider and then take six months to find a new one. If you're between providers for more than a month or two, ring My Aged Care and let them know you're actively looking. As long as the program knows you're still on it, the funding continues.

The four-quarter rule is one reason we recommend picking the new provider first, then giving notice second. It's also why we recommend making the switch a defined project with a start and an end date, not an open-ended search.

Every fact on this page comes from an authoritative government source or the Aged Care Act 2024 itself, not from a provider blog.

• No exit fees: Aged Care Act 2024 · continuity-of-care duty and health.gov.au · Changing Support at Home providers.
• Funding follows the participant; no new assessment needed: My Aged Care · Changing providers.
• 28-day transfer of care records: health.gov.au · Provider guidance.
• 70-day finalisation of unspent contributions: Services Australia provider guidance (Aged Care Act 2024 secondary legislation).
• Referral code reactivation via My Aged Care 1800 200 422: My Aged Care · How to change providers.
• Quarterly rollover cap (greater of $1,000 or 10%): My Aged Care · Managing your Support at Home budget.
• Four-quarter rule: health.gov.au · Continuity of care under Support at Home.

If any of the above changes materially between now and the next indexation on 20 September 2026, we update this article on the same day. If you spot an error, email support@wayly.com.au and we will fix it.