The Productivity Commission’s latest Report on Government Services confirms what aged care providers are seeing every day: older Australians are still waiting far too long to receive the home care they need, with delays continuing to grow despite years of warnings and reform.
The Commission’s annual investigation into the effectives and fairness of federal, state and territory programs, published last week, shows older Australians are now waiting on average 245 days from entering the system to accessing home support, up from 118 days in 2023-24. That includes an average of 27 days just to receive an initial aged care assessment, an increase from 22 days the previous year.
While the Commission’s report did offer some encouraging signs – the proportion of residential aged care services meeting their care-minute targets rose from 34% to 45.9%, and 93.5% of services now meet the mandatory requirement to have a nurse on duty 24/7 – these delays mean many older Australians are now waiting close to a year for support after being told they need it.
The Commission’s report also highlights increasing delays in residential aged care, with the median wait time to enter a facility growing from 136 days in 2023-24 to 162 days. While priority cases remain relatively stable, these figures reflect a system under growing strain.
The outcomes of this report are a stark contrast to the recommendations around ageing in place that came on the back of the 2018 Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety.
The Commission’s final report recommended keeping the waiting list clear by allocating a Home Care Package at the approved level to any new entrants to the waiting list within one month of the date of their assessment.[1] The Commission also recommended demand-driven access to aged care based on assessed need.
Providers like Juniper see the consequences of delayed support every day. The longer someone waits for care, the higher their needs become. Older people who could have remained safely at home with low-level support often deteriorate while waiting, eventually requiring higher-level care, hospitalisation or residential aged care.
In other words, by the time home support becomes available, it is sometimes simply too late for it to achieve its purpose.
The flow-on effect on families and hospitals – already under strain and no place for older people – is also huge.
Providers like Juniper can’t deliver home care until funding has been allocated, which means we are now seeing a bottleneck due to the capped nature of packages and the pace at which they are being released.
Last year’s Senate inquiry into the Government’s delayed aged care reforms revealed, as of July 2025, 121,596 people were still waiting for an Aged Care Assessment Team (ACAT) assessment while 87,000 individuals had already been assessed and were waiting for their home care package. That means more than 200,000 older Australians are currently stuck in a system that is failing to meet their needs.
There was some relief last year when the Government announced it would release 20,000 packages in late 2025 and a further 63,000 by mid this year.
However, these packages are being released at only 60% of their value, limiting their effectiveness and leaving many people still without adequate support.
Home care works best when it is provided early, helping people remain independent, avoid hospital and stay connected to their communities. Every year that passes without sufficient package releases compounds the problem.
What older Australians need most is timely support. Assessment times must be reduced, significantly more packages must be released each year, and the system must move closer to the Royal Commission’s vision of timely, uncapped access to care.
Until then we are going to continue playing catch up to the detriment of our most vulnerable.
Russell Bricknell
CEO Juniper Aged Care
[1] Between 1 January 2022 and 1 July 2024
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