Aged Care Equipment Funding: The Support at Home AT-HM Scheme

For older Australians who are not on the NDIS, the question of how to fund a walking frame, a shower chair, or a grab rail has its own answer. It runs through the aged care system, specifically the Support at Home program and the assistive technology and home modifications scheme within it, usually shortened to AT-HM. The scheme works differently from the NDIS, and knowing the shape of it saves a lot of confusion about which door to knock on.

What Support at Home and AT-HM are

Support at Home is the aged care program that funds services and supports to help older people live safely and independently at home, and Support at Home explained covers the whole program. AT-HM is the part of it that deals with equipment and home changes: assistive technology on one side, home modifications on the other. It is run by the health department, and it is entirely separate from the NDIS.

That separation is the first thing to fix in your mind. The NDIS is for people whose need relates to disability, generally under the age at which aged care begins. Support at Home is for older people. The equipment might be identical, a raised toilet seat is a raised toilet seat, but the funding system, the assessment, and the rules all differ depending on which program a person belongs to. The AT-HM tier checker shows the current tiers and their caps.

How the funding is tiered

AT-HM groups assistive technology into tiers by cost and complexity. There is a low tier for simple, lower-cost aids, a medium tier for more substantial items, and a high tier for the most significant equipment or, on the home modifications side, for larger building works. Each tier carries an annual cap, which is the ceiling the program contributes at that level.

The key thing to understand is that a person does not pick a tier from a menu. An assessment decides which tier applies, based on assessed need. A larger cap is not a target to aim for; it reflects higher-cost, higher-complexity supports that fewer people need. Home modifications follow the same three-tier structure, with the high tier for home modifications carrying a lifetime cap rather than a purely annual one, reflecting that major building changes are usually once-in-a-lifetime works.

Assessment and funding periods

Older people are assessed for AT-HM as part of their broader aged care assessment. The assessor can approve an assistive technology tier, a home modifications tier, or both, and the decision is recorded in the person’s support plan. Funding is then allocated through the program’s own priority systems, which sit separately from the general Support at Home priority process.

The funding does not run indefinitely. Assistive technology funding is generally available over a twelve-month period, though people with progressive conditions may receive a medium or high tier over a longer window that can be extended once, recognising that a condition expected to worsen needs a longer planning horizon. Home modification funding follows a comparable pattern, with review points built in. None of this requires the person to navigate it alone; the assessor and the support plan carry the detail.

Pathways and transitions

There are some finer points worth knowing if they apply to a person’s situation. Certain aged care pathways change what can be accessed: a restorative care pathway allows a broad range of assistive technology and some home modifications, while an end-of-life pathway focuses on the supports most relevant at that stage. And people who moved across from an earlier home care program are generally expected to use up any unspent funds from that program first.

These transition rules matter most at the edges, when someone is moving between programs or pathways, and that is exactly when it pays to lean on the assessor rather than guess. The system is designed so that the assessment does the sorting, which is a relief when the rules themselves are layered.

Working with the assessor

Because an assessment drives everything in AT-HM, the relationship with the assessor is worth treating as central rather than procedural. The assessor is the person who translates a practical difficulty at home into a tier and a support plan, so the more clearly the real, everyday problem is described, the better the match tends to be. A stair that has become unsafe, a shower that is now a fall risk, a walk to the letterbox that is no longer manageable: concrete situations give the assessor what they need.

It also helps to think about the home as a whole rather than a single item. A grab rail solves one problem, but the assessor is looking at how a person moves through their day, and a set of changes that work together often serves better than a single piece of equipment considered in isolation. That wider view is exactly what the assessment is designed to take, and leaning into it, rather than arriving with a fixed shopping list, is what gets the most from the scheme.

Where AT-HM sits alongside other schemes

AT-HM is one of several equipment-funding routes outside the NDIS, and seeing it in that context helps. Veterans have their own scheme, people with continence needs have theirs, and states run their own equipment programs, each with its own door. AT-HM is the aged care door.

For the wider view, the Equipment funding beyond the NDIS guide sets AT-HM alongside those other schemes, and the Other Schemes and Aged Care guide ties them together. The official Support at Home AT-HM pages carry the current tiers, caps, and assessment detail.

AT-HM tiers and eligibility are decided by the program and the assessor on a person’s circumstances. This is general information only; confirm what applies with the official program or an aged care assessor.