Home Environment Risk Assessment Policy Template for Support at Home

A free, editable policy template treating a participant's home as both their private home and your workplace.

Key Takeaways

• Standard 4 of the strengthened Aged Care Quality Standards carries a separate outcome for services in a person's own home, so providers are assessed on the home environment and its equipment.
• Work health and safety law treats any place a worker goes while at work as a workplace, including a private home, so the duty travels through the front door with your staff.
• A participant can decline a control you recommend. That refusal is a negotiated risk to document and review, not grounds for walking away.
• A work health and safety duty cannot be contracted out, so a signed acknowledgement does not move the obligation off the provider.
• The template supplies a twelve-category hazard matrix, a negotiated risk agreement, re-assessment triggers and a written escalation path.

Why home risk assessment is the hardest part of Support at Home compliance

Support at Home commenced on 1 November 2025 under the Aged Care Act 2024, replacing the Home Care Packages Program and the Short-Term Restorative Care Programme. Each participant now has one registered provider holding the service agreement, which concentrates responsibility. When a worker trips on a rug or hurts their back in a bathroom with no turning space, there is no ambiguity about who should have looked.

In home care you control almost nothing about the building. You cannot rewire the kitchen or make someone stop smoking. You can control whether you looked, what you recorded, what you offered, what the participant agreed to, and what you did when a risk stayed.

The hard cases are the participant who refuses the grab rail, keeps the dog loose and smokes indoors while using oxygen. Their right to live as they choose is protected, and so is your worker's right to a safe workplace. A policy protecting only one of them fails.

What This Template Includes

• A policy header with number, version, effective and review dates, owner and approval fields
• Purpose and scope covering every dwelling, approaches to the home, third-party workers and self-managing participants
• Five governing principles, including the rule that no worker performs a task in an uncontrolled risk
• Section 5.1, initial assessment: who assesses, when, on what form, and what gets countersigned
• Section 5.2, a twelve-category hazard matrix: trips and falls, electrical and gas, fire and egress, animals, smoking, hoarding, infection control, equipment, lighting, manual handling space, lone worker access and emergency continuity
• Section 5.4, dignity of risk and the negotiated risk agreement, plus the limit on what a participant's signature can authorise
• Section 5.5, the shared work health and safety duty, written for multi-provider homes
• Section 5.6, scheduled review plus named trigger events and the every-visit check
• Section 5.8, escalation, seven service variation options before withdrawal, and the urgent exception
• An eight-role responsibility table, quarterly monitoring measures, related policy and legislation lists, and sign-off

Who Should Use This

• Registered providers in category 4 delivering personal care and care support at home or in the community
• Quality and compliance managers rewriting a home care policy suite for the Aged Care Act 2024
• Care partners who complete in-home assessments and hold negotiated risk conversations without a script
• Work health and safety officers in home care, especially where manual handling claims rise
• Smaller and regional providers building a policy library without a quality team
• Providers moving across from the Commonwealth Home Support Programme, which runs until no earlier than 1 July 2027

Related Resources

• Dignity of Risk Home Care: A Safety Guide covers supporting a risky choice without abandoning duty of care.
• Dignity of Risk and Positive Risk-Taking Policy Template is the companion policy for your service.
• Work Health And Safety Policy sets the organisational duty this process sits inside.
• Manual Handling and Assisted Mobility Policy Template covers the transfers behind most worker injuries.
• Assistive Technology and Equipment Management Policy Template handles the registers behind category 8.
• AT-HM Scheme Compliance for Support at Home Providers explains the pathway for a hazard needing a rail or ramp.
• Suspending or Ending Support at Home Services Safely covers notice and continuity when a risk cannot be controlled.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is a participant's home really a workplace under work health and safety law?

Yes. A workplace is any place a worker goes, or is likely to be, while at work, and that expressly includes a private home where a person is being cared for. It stays a private home for the participant and is a workplace for the visit. Safe Work Australia guidance says to assess the risk before a home visit and put controls in place.

What happens when a participant refuses a control we have recommended?

You record it as a negotiated risk, not a dead end. Explain the hazard and likely consequences in plain language, ask what the participant will accept instead, and write the agreed alternatives into a signed agreement with a review date. A participant cannot sign away a risk to your workers that the law requires you to control: they may keep smoking at home, and you may still require a smoke-free period around a visit.

How often does a home environment risk assessment have to be redone?

The template sets a full assessment at least every twelve months, aligned with the care plan review, which under Support at Home must happen at least annually. Trigger events force a re-assessment within two business days: a fall, a hospital discharge, a mobility change, new equipment, a new animal or a worker safety report. A short check happens every visit.

Does this still apply if the participant self-manages their services?

It does. A participant may manage their own services, budget and workers under their approved support plan, but accountability for regulatory obligations stays with the registered provider. You assess the home for the workers you send, and share hazard information for those they engage.

Can we refuse to deliver a service because a home is unsafe?

Only as a last option, and only after trying and recording the cheaper alternatives: changing the task, the method, the equipment, the time of day, the number of workers or the location. Section 5.8 sets that order, names who may decide, and requires written notice saying what would have to change for services to resume.

Download the template and assess your next home properly

Take the twelve-category hazard matrix from section 5.2, use it on your next three in-home assessments, and compare what it surfaces against your current form. Most providers find two or three categories they have never checked in writing, usually lighting, manual handling space or lone worker access. Fill in the bracketed placeholders, approve it through your governance process, then brief the care partners who hold the conversation. Browse the library at Aged Care Policy Templates.