Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee, , 25:46 to 35:49
Officials provide data on home care package waitlists and discuss the expected timelines for reporting updated program statistics.
Topics: Health, Public service staffing
Speakers: Hon Anne Ruston, Greg Pugh, Jasmine Snow, Sonja Stewart, Dorinda Cox, Blair Comley PSM, Rachel Blackwood
outcome three aging and age care and invite uh questions. Um I'm also welcoming sorry um the age care quality and safety commissioner um Miss Les Liz Heron Webb um to the table. She's here. >> no, we can go with the department first.
>> she might have been caught surprised by
>> That's right. I think everybody was secretary. We are running exceptionally uh nearly two hours ahead of schedule which is quite remarkable for this committee but um I will uh I will invite questions from Senator Ruston.
>> Thank you very much chair. So um what are the current what is the current um MPS number?
>> Uh Sonia Stewart, deputy secretary of um uh the age care group. So as at the 31st of December 2025, there were 1,001,366 people waiting in our supported home priority system for a supported home place for their approved um at their approved classification. I think it's important to note that 27.7% so 36,43 of those people waiting a place at their approved classification or are already receiving um a home care um services with a minimum service offer and 72.3% or 94,463 of those people are waiting without a
the um the 27% or the 36,000 that are are waiting with a minimum service officer offer, how many of those are CHSP and how many of them are packages at a lower level?
>> Uh so Jasmine's no accessing home support division. Unfortunately, we are unable to tell you how many people are accessing [cough and clears throat] the HSP because we can't match the data set. Our data set will increase in terms of our availability of pulling out the data over time. We made some changes to Dex on one November 2025, but at this stage we can't give you that figure about those people accessing CHSP at the same time as waiting for their support at home.
>> But you've just given me a piece of information to say that 27% or 36,000 um of the people that are on the NPS are receiving minimum support. How do you know that if you don't know whether they've got CHSP or not? Or are they all receiving a package a a support at home package just not at the level that they've been assessed for? That's right.
We're talking about the interim package or the minimum service offer with that statistic.
>> Okay. So, those 36,000 have got a support at home something.
>> Yes, that's right.
>> Okay. Um in the So, when when do people find out that they've only got 60% of their package?
>> Uh when they receive their letter.
>> Okay. So, when they actually receive the package or when they receive the letter to say that they are eligible for a
package. when they receive the letter it will highlight that it's a minimum
>> Okay. So of the I'm just trying to understand. So the minimum is that when we talk about the 60% package is that a minimum service offer? So on the wait list, you've got 36,000 with a minimum service offer and then you've got another 100,000 or 95,000 that haven't got anything. All right. How many people are currently
Rachel Blackwood, Assistant Secretary, Access and Home Support Division. As at the 31st of December, 2025, there were 103,527 referrals for age care needs assessments on hand.
>> Okay. Um and just going back to that um in the last couple of um estimates you've actually provided us unverified data that was only a few days old. Do you actually have the data for the 31st of June even though I understand it wouldn't have been verified?
>> Uh not sorry. So great pew uh first assistant secretary of the access support division. Uh as Mr. Stewart has pointed out we've got the 31st of December 2025 data. We do not at this stage have 31 January 2026 data.
>> Okay. Why why is it late this year whereas I mean on other occasions it's in the space of seven days you've been able to provide it. Has there been a problem?
>> Uh not a problem but as you can appreciate and as we've stated in the past um with the advent of the new support home program and the new age care act from one November uh we are still going through our data validation and verification processes. So uh we have been looking to extract that data. We do want to make it publicly available uh shortly. Uh but at this point in time, [clears throat] we haven't been able to extract um a verifiable set of data for the most recent full month.
>> Um so on average, how long are people waiting um for a supported home package? Both um high priority and normal. So I
think that's important to state that um for people uh who are need urgent um they are uh receiving that within the month. Um did you want to go through one
month for high priority? Yep.
>> Uh so sorry uh the priority the highest is urgent. So we move between high and urgent between the old program the new program. So urgent within one month high the expected wait time is 1.5 to 2.5 months.
>> Sorry. So sorry urgent high priority is months.
>> Y, >> medium is 8 to 9 months >> and then standard is 10 to 11 months.
>> Okay. Have you got the numbers of people that that um like in terms of the breakdown of urgent, high priority, medium, and standard? What sort of numbers are there in theund 31,366 people that you've said are currently on the weight list? What will be the breakdown of those four categories in
amongst that? Uh so Senator as at the 31st of December 2025 um of the 131,366 uh people of which uh we've got the 94,963 people um who don't have uh who are awaiting a support home place at that approved classification without a minimum service offer. The breakdown is as follows. So we've got 129 people in the urgent category. We've got 1,73 people in the high category. We've got 19,521 people in the medium category and then we've got 110,013 people in the standard category.
>> Okay. So, on the basis that we have barely anybody in the urgent category, which obviously is a very good thing, um we've got a very low number of people in the high priority category. a medium amount in the medium category, but most of the people are in the standard category. What is the overall average wait time for a package across if you average out across the
>> I believe that's nine months. I'll just confirm that for you in a moment.
>> Nine months. I've got to say looking at those figures, I don't know how you're going to come up with that as an answer, but good luck with it. Um, so what is the longest time that anybody's waiting for a package?
>> We won't have that data available as
>> When what date too would you have that
>> I'll follow that one up and provide that to you as well, Senator.
>> Okay. So on average um how long are people waiting to receive a service under CHSP?
>> I might ask my colleague Miss Atkinson to come to the table.
>> While she's uh coming I can provide the average weight times on day one of support at home. So they were obviously inherited from the national prioritization system. So as at 31 October was 8 months across all levels of priorities.
>> Okay. So, I'd be really keen to see if you could um get me some more updated data to see whether those weight times have improved or got worse because >> um we certainly had some concern about the report from the productivity commission.
>> Yes.
>> Um who raised some very significant concerns about the doubling of the wait time >> in the space of 12 months. So, if you could provide some data on that that
would be great. Senator just um just to uh reiterate earlier uh comment uh we are intending to go through a public um release of this data and we are planning on following the same quarterly recording pattern as we did under the home care packages program. So uh in the next um short while uh we will be in a position to release the first quarter of 2526. So that will just be the two months of November and December 2025. So we intend to make that publicly available uh shortly.
>> so what is a short while?
>> Uh we are aiming at this stage for early March.
>> Early March.