This page has been updated with the latest data available at 30 June 2019. You can download data directly from the visualisations by clicking in the graph area and using the 'download' menu.
Australian aged care services offer a variety of care in different settings. Home support and home care services provide care in the community for people living at home. Residential aged care services provide care in residential facilities, both for permanent and short-term respite stays. Flexible care services deliver care in a range of settings.
- Across Australia on 30 June 2019, there were 873 organisations providing residential aged care through 2,717 services. There were 928 organisations providing home care services.
- 1,458 organisations were funded to provide home support during 2018–19 through 3,717 service outlets. Almost three quarters (72%) of Home Support organisations were not-for-profit.
- Residential aged care is delivered across Australia through an allocation of places. The number of places has increased from approximately 184,600 on 30 June 2012 to 213,397 on 30 June 2019.
- Not-for-profit organisations manage more than half of the places in residential aged care (55%).
- From February 2017, government funding for home care is no longer attached to a place in a particular service. This affects some of the time series data for this topic.
Where are aged care services based?
The map below shows where Australia’s aged care services are located. Each dot represents an aged care service, and the colour reflects the type of care it offers (see the next section for a description of these types of care).
Generally, at 30 June 2019:
- Residential aged care services are concentrated in more densely populated urban areas, with around 3 in 5 (62%) facilities located in Major cities.
- Transition care services tend to be located near hospitals, so are also based mainly in urban areas (53%).
- Flexible care services focused on particular communities are often located in rural areas—for example, only 1 in 9 (11%) National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Flexible Aged Care Program services are located in cities.
The location of the service is a base from which care is delivered, so services for home care and home support can deliver care some distance away from the physical location of the service marked on the map (please note: home support services on this map are shown if they were active during the financial year 2018–19, while all other services are as at 30 June 2019).
A map of Australia shows where different types of aged care services are located. The map shows that the majority of residential care services were located in densely populated urban areas, and were much less concentrated in rural parts of Australia. Community-based care services such as home care services were much more common in rural areas.
What types of care are available?
Government-funded programs offer different types of aged care.
Mainstream types of care are:
- Residential aged care, which offers long- (permanent) or short-term stays (respite) in an aged care facility
- Home care (Home Care Packages Program), which provides different levels of aged care services for people in their own homes
- Home support (Commonwealth Home Support Programme), which provides entry-level support at home.
Flexible care consists of:
- Transition care, which provides short-term care to restore independent living after a hospital stay
- Short-term restorative care, which expands on transition care to include anyone whose capacity to live independently is at risk
- Multi-purpose services, which offer aged care alongside health services in Regional and remote areas
- Innovative Care Programme, which includes a range of programs to support flexible ways of providing care to target population groups
- National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Flexible Aged Care Program, which provides culturally-appropriate aged care at home and in the community.
How is aged care delivered?
Aged care services are managed by not-for-profit, government, or private organisations. In most cases, the Australian Government contributes towards the costs of care—you can read more about this in the Spending section. Each organisation can operate a number of different services, sometimes across different aged care programs.
- There were 873 organisations that operated 2,717 services in residential aged care, with an average occupancy rate of 89% across 2018–19.
- 928 organisations that provided home care services at 30 June 2019.
- In 2018–19, 1,458 organisations were funded to provide home support services.
A table shows the number of aged care providers, services and places for each type of aged care services. The largest number of aged care providers was for home support, with 1,458 organisations. Home care had the second largest number of aged care providers, 928, and Residential aged care had the largest number of places of any type of aged care service, 213,397.
Where are aged care places located?
Some aged care programs are allocated a set number of government-funded places. An allocated place becomes operational when it is made available for someone to take it up.
- There were almost 213,400 places in residential aged care at 30 June 2019. The 3 largest states—New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland—collectively accounted for about four-fifths of these places (79%).
- Short-term restorative care was introduced in 2017 with 400 places, which increased to 825 places at 30 June 2019. The transition care program offered 4,060 places at 30 June 2019, with the 3 largest states accounting for just over three-quarters of these places (77%).
- Multi-purpose services delivered care through 3,646 places and the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Flexible Aged Care Program through 1,072 places. Around 2 in 5 places in this program were operational in the Northern Territory (43%).
A stacked bar graph shows the number of available places for each aged care program type by state and territory. The majority of aged care places were in residential care, and the larger states, such as New South Wales and Victoria had more places than smaller states and territories.
Explore more about places in residential aged care and flexible care, such as their geographical distribution.