Registered Supporter Consent Rules in Home Services

A registered supporter helps a Support at Home participant make and communicate their own decisions. They do not make the decision. The Department of Health, Disability and Ageing is unambiguous: becoming a registered supporter gives a person no decision-making authority for the older person. That sentence, published in the Department's guidance on registered supporters in aged care, is where consent records come unstuck. Staff treat registration as a permission slip, and the file shows the daughter's agreement where it should show the participant's.

Key Takeaways

Registration confers information access and a support role, never authority to decide for the participant.
Only an appointed decision maker with active legal authority can agree on a participant's behalf, and you must check scope and currency first.
My Aged Care does not notify you when a supporter relationship changes, so re-check the portal.
Consent records need the participant's own words, the supports offered, and how disagreement was resolved.
In a private home, entry, photographs and information sharing are separate consents.

What the Role Is and What It Is Not

The Aged Care Act 2024, which commenced on 1 November 2025 and repealed the Aged Care Act 1997, presumes every older person can make their own decisions. Supported decision-making makes that presumption workable: it enables a person to exercise their legal capacity, including communicating their will and preferences, through whatever support they need. It does not mean deciding for another person.

A supporter is someone the participant has chosen and consented to register, usually a family member or friend. Acting in line with the participant's will and preferences, they can help the person decide, access information, and communicate decisions already made. The Department's guide to aged care law on supported decision-making states that a registered supporter is not the same as a substitute decision maker and generally cannot decide on the person's behalf. Their duties run the other way: promote the participant's wishes and wellbeing including decisions the supporter disagrees with, support them only as much as they need, act in good faith, and manage conflicts of interest. For briefing a care manager, see the registered supporter role explained and how decision-making supporters work in practice.

Three things sit outside the role. An informal family contact is not registered and has no entitlement to information, though the participant can ask you to involve them. An attorney or tribunal-appointed guardian holds real authority, but only within that instrument's scope and while it is active. And a worker who accepts a relative's instruction because they are talking has no authority at all.

The Three Supporter Labels in the Portal

Supporter relationships appear in the My Aged Care Service and Support Portal under three labels that reflect the consent given at registration.

Supporter - registered with consent, and the participant has consented to certain information going to them automatically.
Supporter lite - registered with consent but without consent to automatic information sharing, so no portal access to the record.
Supporter guardian - also holds guardianship, enduring power of attorney or similar, so they are an appointed decision maker who can decide within their active legal authority, and can be registered without the participant's consent.

Two limits matter. The portal shows name, relationship, status, date registered and contact details, but not the legal documentation behind a supporter guardian's authority, nor medical evidence about the person's decision-making ability. It displays only active relationships and does not notify you of changes, so an intake check alone is not a control.

What Your Consent Records Have to Capture

Outcome 1.3 of the strengthened Quality Standards requires a system ensuring participants give informed consent where it is required for a treatment, procedure or other intervention, and one that identifies people needing decision-making support, involves their supporters where possible, and uses substitute decision makers only once the options for supporting the person are exhausted. The Department's quick reference guide names the fields to capture.

Who was present - the participant, which supporter, which staff, anyone else in the room.
Supports provided - interpreter, plain language materials, extra time, hearing or vision aids.
Options explained - the choices offered and how they were presented.
The decision in the participant's own words - verbatim where you can, respecting non-verbal or assisted communication.
How disagreement was handled - the differing views, and how the participant's choice was confirmed.
Scope and limits - what the participant agrees the supporter may be told and involved in, and what they do not.

Care plan sign off is where this gets tested. A plan signed by a supporter, with no record of the participant being asked, is a defect even when clinically sound. Our piece on what to record when you take consent covers form design.

Consent Inside Someone Else's Home

Home services add consents that residential settings handle by standing arrangement. Entry is the first. A participant who agreed to a Tuesday visit in March has not agreed to an unannounced reassessment in October, and a relative who opens the door has not consented for them. Record entry consent with named limits and re-confirm it when the pattern changes.

Photographs are a separate, purpose-specific consent. A wound image for clinical records, a bathroom photograph for an assistive technology or home modification quote, and a marketing image are three different requests. Consent to one is not consent to the others, and a photograph inside a home often captures household members who agreed to nothing.

Information sharing in front of family trips up good staff. A supporter lite has no entitlement to automatic information, and an unregistered relative none at all. A worker who discusses continence, finances or cognition in a lounge room because the family are sitting there has created a privacy issue, however helpful the intent. Outcome 1.2 requires privacy to be respected and intimate care carried out sensitively and in private, per the Commission's guidance on dignity, respect and privacy. Ask who the participant wants in the room.

When the Participant and the Supporter Disagree

Disagreement is not a failure of the arrangement. A supporter must promote the participant's will and preferences, including decisions they would not make themselves, so where the two diverge the participant's decision stands unless an appointed decision maker is acting inside active authority over that matter.

The Department's worker guidance gives a sequence worth adopting verbatim: pause, separate, escalate, document. Pause when something feels wrong, create a private moment with the participant, raise it with a supervisor, and record what you saw. The signals are concrete: the supporter speaks over or contradicts the participant, refuses to let you check in privately, or the participant goes quiet when they are present.

Participants can also withdraw consent, end a supporter relationship through My Aged Care, and ask the System Governor to cancel a registration. Your role is not to adjudicate the family dispute. Keep asking the participant and escalate suspected coercion through your incident pathway.

Checking Authority Before You Act in the Field

The Department is explicit that providers must confirm the legal authority of anyone seeking to make a decision for an older person, including its scope and whether it is active, before actioning it. Build the check into the visit, not head office. Ask the participant first, every time, even where a supporter is registered. If someone else offers a decision, ask whether they are a registered supporter or an appointed decision maker, and what it concerns. If authority is unclear mid-visit, deliver only what the participant has already consented to and what immediate safety requires, defer the rest, and call the care partner that day. A deferral with a written reason is defensible; an unrecorded assumption is not. Anchoring this in a rights, dignity and choice policy template gives training and audit the same source.

Section 23 of the Aged Care Act 2024 sets out the rights and section 24 qualifies their effect. The Commission's wording is that providers must take all reasonable and proportionate steps to act in line with the Statement, show they understand it, and have ways of making sure they do. Use that formulation internally, from the Commission's explanation of what the Statement of Rights means for providers. Your evidence of those steps is the consent record.

Registered Supporter Records Carry Your Evidence

None of this is hard at the kitchen table. Ask the participant, offer the support they need to answer, then record what they said and who helped. The real risk is not that staff misunderstand the law. It is that your forms quietly record the wrong person's agreement.

Related Resources

Frequently Asked Questions

Can a registered supporter sign a care plan or service agreement?

Not on their own authority. Registration gives a support role, not decision-making authority, so you need the participant's agreement. A supporter can help them understand the document and communicate the decision they make. If the signatory is acting as an attorney or guardian instead, record which instrument they rely on and confirm it is active and covers that matter.

How do we know whether someone is actually registered?

Check the Service and Support Portal, which shows active relationships and the applicable label. Because it does not notify you of additions, suspensions or cancellations, re-check at reassessment and whenever a new person starts speaking for the participant.

What is the difference between a registered supporter and a substitute decision maker?

A supporter helps the person decide. A substitute decision maker decides for them under a Commonwealth, state or territory arrangement such as guardianship or an enduring power of attorney, and only while that authority is active and in scope. One person can hold both roles, which is why you check the authority, not the relationship.

Can we rely on a relative who answers the phone when the participant cannot?

Only for information the participant has consented to share, and never for decisions. Where they genuinely cannot communicate a decision that day, look for an appointed decision maker with active authority, record the support you tried, and escalate internally if nobody holds authority to act.

Registered Supporters and Consent in Home Services