What a Support at Home Service Agreement Must Include

A Support at Home service agreement is a prescribed instrument, not a welcome pack with a signature block on the back. Its minimum contents are set by sections 148-65 and 148-70 of the Aged Care Rules 2025, and having a compliant one in place before or on the day services start is a condition of your registration. The Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission has already named service agreements among the most common areas of non-compliance in the program's first year. Most of those failures are document control failures, not care failures.

Key Takeaways

The agreement must exist before or on the day services commence. No agreement is a breach of a registration condition, not just late paperwork.
Prices must be itemised service by service, and any price above your published price needs its reason stated.
Variation has two lawful gateways only: a GST-driven change on written notice, or mutual consent after genuine consultation.
A registered supporter helps the participant decide. They hold no decision-making authority and cannot sign in the participant's place.
The agreement, its versions and the evidence of each review are records you must retain for seven years.

The Clauses the Aged Care Rules 2025 Actually Require

Section 148-70 splits its content requirements into a universal list and an additional list for providers delivering through the home support, assistive technology and home modifications service groups. Read both. The universal content covers the parties and their contact details, the contact details of any supporters, a copy of the participant's access approval, the commencement date, the start day, the review date for ongoing services, and how the participant will be involved in decisions about how and by whom services are delivered.

The home support additions are where most drafting errors sit:

Named services - each identified by its service list name in the Rules, not your internal product name, plus a note of which services an associated provider will deliver.
Prices per service - the actual price you will charge that participant for each one.
Higher-price justification - where a price exceeds your published price, the reason for the difference.
Indexation terms - if prices may rise, the date, the method of calculation and the reason for both.
Cessation grounds - a statement that you may only stop delivering services in the circumstances set out in section 149-35(2).
Termination mechanics - how and when the agreement may be terminated.

Section 148-70(1) also voids any provision that would leave the participant worse off than Commonwealth law would otherwise leave them. A habit carried over from a Home Care Agreement, such as a minimum service period, is exactly what that provision targets. The department's guidance on service agreements for Support at Home includes a template reflecting these minimums, though you may use your own.

Itemised Pricing and the Participant Contribution Position

Itemised pricing does two jobs. It makes the participant's contribution calculable, and it is the artefact the Commission reads when testing whether your prices are reasonable. Under the Rules, the price you charge must not be unreasonable, meaning it must be grounded in the costs of delivering that service to that person. You must publish your most frequently charged price for each service on both My Aged Care and your own site, and prices must be reasonable and transparent. The Commission's bulletin on Support at Home pricing requirements sets out what it will ask for.

Several charging positions must be reflected correctly:

Clinical supports - no participant contribution is payable. A contribution line against nursing or allied health is a defect on the face of the document.
Independence and everyday living services - contributions apply, set by the participant's Services Australia means assessment, not negotiated with you.
Administration and travel - cannot be separate line items and cannot be claimed from the care management account. They belong inside the unit price.
Entry and exit fees - not permitted. Government guidance states plainly that providers cannot charge an entry or exit fee, and the Act's fee framework is exhaustive.

Two dated changes need handling rather than ignoring. Personal care moves from the Independence contribution category to Clinical Supports on 1 October 2026, changing the contribution position for a service many participants receive weekly. Government-set price caps, slated for 1 July 2026, were deferred in May 2026 with no replacement date announced, so caps must not be written into agreements as if they bind today. If your policies do not already set out your fee transparency obligations and tie them to the agreement schedule, the two will drift.

Variation Control Is Where Agreements Fail

Section 148-65(5) allows variation on two bases. The first is a change necessary to implement GST law, where you must give reasonable written notice. The second is mutual consent, requiring adequate consultation and the participant's actual consent. There is no third path. A price increase notified by letter and treated as accepted through silence does not meet the consent test, and a pricing schedule quietly reissued at the start of a quarter is worse.

Review obligations sit alongside variation. For ongoing services you must review the agreement at least every twelve months and whenever the participant asks. The review must give them a genuine opportunity to participate, consider whether updates are needed, and produce a variation where one is necessary. A review that changes nothing is still a review you must prove happened.

Three related mechanics belong in the same clause family. A cooling-off right applies where the participant notifies you within fourteen days of entry and before their start day, at which point the agreement has no effect and fees or contributions paid must be refunded. Cessation is confined to the grounds in section 149-35(2), which include non-payment within the participant's control where no alternative arrangement was negotiated, and written notice with reasons and a date is required. Pairing these clauses with your entry, transition and exit policy template keeps contract and procedure aligned.

Who May Sign, and Where a Registered Supporter Fits

The agreement is between you and the participant, or their active appointed decision maker where one holds legal authority such as guardianship or an enduring power of attorney. Those two are the only signing parties. A registered supporter is different: the role helps the older person make and communicate their own decisions and confers no authority to decide for them. A supporter may do most of the talking, and if the participant requests it, a supporter, family member, carer or advocate must be present while the agreement is developed. None of that makes them a signatory. Governa's note on the registered supporter role explained is worth putting in front of care partners, because a family member's status on a signature page is what front-line staff most often get wrong. Where a participant agrees but cannot physically sign, keep a record of the discussion in which they agreed, and that note becomes the evidence of consent.

The Evidence Trail an Assessor Will Ask For

The Rules require you to keep the service agreement itself, along with the care and services plan, clinical records, accounts and monthly statements, for seven years from the day each record is made. Every superseded version is still a record. Assessors rarely ask whether you have an agreement. They ask for the version in force on a date when a disputed charge was raised, the consultation that preceded the variation, and the participant's consent to it.

Build the file so it answers those questions without a search:

Version history - sequential versions with effective dates, so the agreement in force on any day is identifiable.
Signed copies - executed documents plus proof a copy went to the participant.
Consent evidence - the consultation record and consent for each variation, or the file note where signing was not possible.
Review records - dated evidence of each annual or requested review, including reviews that changed nothing.
Pricing support - the cost basis behind each price and the reason recorded for any above-published price.

Agreements held as a single mutable file, overwritten each time something changes, cannot produce that history. Policies that keep records that survive an assessor's questions separate a finding from a conversation.

A Service Agreement Is a Controlled Document

Under the Aged Care Act 2024 the agreement is now the evidentiary anchor for pricing, contributions, consent and cessation all at once. Treat it as a controlled document with an owner, a version register, a review calendar and a variation workflow that cannot be bypassed. Providers who manage it as correspondence will keep rediscovering, one participant at a time, that they cannot prove what was agreed.

Related Resources

Frequently Asked Questions

When must the service agreement be in place?

Before or on the day you start delivering services. Delivering without one breaches a condition of your registration. Different timing applies to a small number of circumstances specified in the Act and to specialist aged care programs, so check the provision rather than assuming the general rule.

Can we vary prices without the participant's signature?

Only where the variation is necessary to implement GST law, and then you must give reasonable written notice. Every other change requires mutual consent after adequate consultation. Notification alone is not consent, and a schedule reissued without agreement is not a lawful variation.

Can a registered supporter sign the agreement?

No. A registered supporter supports the participant to make their own decisions and holds no decision-making authority. Signing rests with the participant or an active appointed decision maker acting within their legal authority.

What happens if a transitioned participant will not sign?

Transitional arrangements gave participants ninety days from receiving their confirmed contribution rate from Services Australia. If it remains unsigned, the department's guidance is to keep working with them, and only then consider ceasing services, with fourteen days written notice. Document every attempt.

Do we need a new agreement after every review?

No. If the review identifies nothing to change, no new agreement is required. You still have to evidence that the review occurred, usually a dated file note recording the discussion and the outcome.