Participant Contributions Policy Template

Charge the Right Contribution, Every Time: the Support at Home Participant Contributions and Fee Policy Template

A free, editable Word policy template that sets out who pays what under Support at Home, what has to be in writing before the first visit, and how to handle hardship and unpaid accounts without cutting off care.

Key Takeaways

The Government fully funds Clinical Support services, so no participant contribution is payable for them. Participants contribute only to Independence and Everyday Living services.
Contribution rates come from a Services Australia income and assets assessment. Providers apply the rate they are advised, they do not set it.
Participants who were receiving or approved for a Home Care Package on or before 12 September 2024, and who are not liable for an income-tested care fee, pay no contributions for services on the Support at Home service list.
Providers must publish the price they most commonly charge for each service on My Aged Care and on their own website, and those prices must be all-inclusive of travel and administration.
Unpaid contributions call for a hardship conversation and a documented pathway, not an abrupt withdrawal of services.

Why Contributions Are the Easiest Thing to Get Wrong

Support at Home moved contributions from a single package-level fee to a per-service question. Every line you deliver now has to be sorted into a category that is fully funded or one the participant pays towards, at a rate someone else determined. The maths is not the hard part. The hard part is that the classification, the rate, the published price and the invoice live in different systems and different heads, and a mismatch between any two shows up as a wrong charge to an older person.

Three failure patterns turn up again and again. A transitioned participant who should be paying nothing gets invoiced because nobody flagged their protection. A travel or administration line appears on an invoice when it was supposed to be inside the published price. An overdue account quietly triggers a reduced roster before anyone has asked the participant whether they are struggling. Each one is a reasonable staff member following a process that was never written down.

This template writes that process down. It gives your care partners, finance officer and board one agreed account of how money is calculated, explained, invoiced and chased, with decision points and timeframes already drafted and only the bracketed details left for you.

What This Template Includes

A completed policy control block: policy number, version, effective and review dates, owner and approver.
Purpose and scope covering ongoing classifications, transitioned HCP classifications, the AT-HM, Restorative Care and End-of-Life pathways, self-managing participants and subcontracted services.
A policy statement setting out the commitments your board is signing, including that no participant is charged for a Clinical Support service.
A definitions table covering participant contribution, Clinical Support, Independence and Everyday Living, the 'no worse off' protection, published price, quarterly budgets and carryover.
Ten drafted procedures: classifying services before quoting, obtaining and applying the contribution rate, handling 'no worse off' participants, publishing prices, written disclosure before services start, invoicing and monthly statements, hardship, disputes and billing errors, unpaid contributions and continuity of care, and records and internal audit.
A roles and responsibilities table splitting duties across the board, chief executive, finance and compliance manager, care partners, finance officers and subcontracted providers.
Related policies, relevant legislation and standards, monitoring measures and a document control sign-off block.

Who Should Use This

Registered Support at Home providers writing or rewriting their fee policy for the first time under the Aged Care Act 2024.
Finance and compliance managers who own the master price list and the My Aged Care price publication.
Care partners who have to explain a contribution at a kitchen table and want the same answer every time.
Quality managers preparing evidence of fair and reasonable charging ahead of an audit against the strengthened Quality Standards.
Boards that need documented oversight of hardship decisions and of any service change where payment was a factor.

Related Resources

Frequently Asked Questions

Which services can we actually charge a contribution for?

Clinical Support services are fully funded by the Government, so no contribution applies. Participants contribute to Independence and Everyday Living services. The template makes classification a step that happens before a price is quoted, with an escalation path for services that could sit in more than one category and a rule against applying a reclassification retrospectively.

Who sets the contribution rate?

A Services Australia income and assets assessment does. Your staff apply the rate they are advised, they never estimate or negotiate it. The template restricts rate entry to the finance role, requires the source advice to be attached to the participant record, and sets a timeframe for writing to the participant when a rate changes.

How do we handle 'no worse off' participants?

People receiving or approved for a Home Care Package on or before 12 September 2024 who are not liable for an income-tested care fee pay no contributions for services on the Support at Home service list. The template requires a flag in your client system, a check of that flag before the first invoice and at every rate change, and treats any charge to a flagged participant as a billing error to be refunded and logged.

Can we add a travel or administration charge separately?

No. Prices must be all-inclusive, so travel, administration and other delivery costs belong inside the published price rather than on a separate invoice line. The template puts one master price list under a named owner, requires a written cost basis for every price change, and sets a monthly reconciliation between that list, your website and My Aged Care.

What if a participant stops paying?

You treat it as a sign of need first. The template sets a staged response at 30, 45 and 60 days: a plain-language reminder, personal contact by the care partner to check for hardship or financial abuse, then a written hardship offer with referral to independent advocacy. Clinical Support and any service needed for safety keep running, and only the chief executive can propose a service change, with written notice and a transition plan.

Put It in Front of Your Board This Month

Download the template, fill the bracketed fields with your own roles, systems and timeframes, then take one hour to test it against three live accounts: a transitioned participant, one on a mixed service mix, and one currently overdue. The gaps you find in that hour are the gaps an auditor or a complaint would have found for you.