Finance Reads of the Week: Two Support at Home Changes Land on 1 October, the NDIS Records Duty Is Now Law, and Thriving Kids Starts in Four Days
Finance Reads of the Week: Two Support at Home Changes Land on 1 October, the NDIS Records Duty Is Now Law, and Thriving Kids Starts in Four Days
Five operational and compliance reads for aged care, NDIS, childcare and SME finance teams — including two separate funding mechanisms hitting the same date that need two separate lines in your model.
This week's round-up is unusually date-driven: four of the five items turn on 1 October, which is Thursday. If you run an aged care or paediatric therapy service, this is the week modelling assumptions get tested rather than discussed. Start with the first item — it changes your debtors ledger without changing your service price, and that combination tends to get missed.
1. From Thursday, personal care under Support at Home stops being something clients contribute to at all
From 1 October 2026, all personal care services on the Support at Home service list move from the Independence contributions category to Clinical Supports. The Commonwealth fully funds them and participants pay no contribution — covering showering, dressing, continence support and assistance with self-administration of medication — provided personal care is approved in the participant's support plan and budget is available. The change is mandatory for providers and automatic for participants. Two details decide whether your October reconciliation is clean: the service still draws on the participant's Support at Home budget, so this changes who pays rather than whether the budget is consumed; and services delivered before 1 October still attract a contribution even if claimed afterwards. The change was announced in April, so this is a settled rule rather than fresh news.
Why it matters: Debtor composition moves, materially. Personal care contributions that sat in receivables as consumer debts are replaced by Commonwealth-funded claims — a different collection profile, ageing curve and credit-loss assumption. If your provision is a flat percentage of total receivables, reassess it against the new payer mix rather than rolling it forward. Three things before Thursday: update service agreements, give clients written notice so the first October statement isn't a surprise, and confirm your billing system cuts at the delivery date rather than the claim date. That last one is where I'd expect the errors.
Source: Department of Health, Disability and Ageing — Support at Home personal care contribution change, My Aged Care — Support at Home personal care contribution changes
2. Support at Home subsidies and supplements also rise on 1 October — for a completely different reason
Separately, Support at Home subsidy rates and several supplements rise from 1 October 2026 to fund the aged care nurses' award wage increase that took effect from the first full pay period on or after 1 August 2026, under the Fair Work Commission's Aged Care Work Value Case (the nurses' decision of 6 December 2024). The supplements affected are Veterans, Dementia and Cognition, Oxygen, Enteral Feeding, Top-up and Care Management. The lag reflects the quarterly budget cycle, and the Department says the 1 October rate includes a slightly higher amount to support providers across the gap from 1 August.
Why it matters: Two unrelated mechanisms on one date need two lines in your model. Item one changes who pays. This one is a real rate increase funding a cost you've carried since August. Model them separately or you won't be able to explain the October variance. Watch the bridging component: if it is removed in a later quarter, annualising October's subsidy overstates the year, so check the Department's rates each quarter rather than assuming. And confirm the 1 August nursing increase was actually applied from the correct pay period — a top-up arriving now is a good prompt to check the cost it funds was booked properly.
Source: Department of Health, Disability and Ageing — Funding for Support at Home aged care nurses' award wage increase, My Aged Care — Support at Home funding changes from 1 October 2026
3. The NDIS seven-year records duty stopped being "proposed" a month ago — and more of the Act is on the way
A status correction worth making explicitly. When I wrote about NDIS claims record-keeping on 6 July, the seven-year retention duty was still before a Senate committee and I flagged it as proposed. It isn't any more. The NDIS Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Act 2026 received Royal Assent on 20 August 2026, and the first tranche of changes commenced seven days later, on 27 August. That tranche includes record retention for NDIS claims — seven years for providers, three for participants and plan managers — along with tighter rules on unscheduled plan reassessments and stronger compliance powers. More follows: the 90-day claiming window starts on 1 December 2026, and the Senate-added offence for offering inducements or kickbacks is reported to commence three months after assent, around 20 November.
Why it matters: A duty quietly in force for a month is more urgent than one starting next year, because any gap is already live. Seven years is longer than many standard retention policies specify, so check what your systems actually keep — including attachments in cloud accounting and practice-management tools — not what your policy says. And use the short window before the inducement offence starts to review referral arrangements, broker relationships and incentive-based sales. The line between a legitimate referral fee and a prohibited inducement isn't obvious from the outside, and a long-standing informal arrangement can become a problem without anyone deciding to do anything wrong.
Source: Department of Health, Disability and Ageing — About the changes to the NDIS, Department of Health, Disability and Ageing — Securing the NDIS timeline
4. Thriving Kids starts rolling out on 1 October — the revenue-mix question is now an operational one
State-delivered Thriving Kids services begin rolling out no later than 1 October 2026 for children aged eight and under with developmental delay and/or autism and low to moderate support needs, with the program expected to be at scale by 1 January 2028. Governments have committed $4 billion — $2 billion from the Commonwealth, matched by the states — with at least $1.4 billion of the Commonwealth share flowing to states as direct service funding. The access change comes later: changes to NDIS eligibility for this cohort apply to new applicants from 1 January 2028, and children already in the NDIS before then are reassessed under the existing criteria.
Why it matters: I looked at the revenue-mix implications on 5 August, when this was still a planning exercise. The follow-up is that the runway to January 2028 is now one you're on. For a paediatric therapy practice, the likely shape is a period of running two funding channels side by side as state services come online — new agreements, new billing arrangements, and an administrative cost, not just a revenue question. If you haven't already, measure what share of current revenue sits with children aged eight and under with low to moderate support needs. That percentage is your exposure, and it's the number a board asks for first.
Source: NDIS — Thriving Kids, Department of Health, Disability and Ageing — Thriving Kids questions and answers
5. ATO debt now compounds at over 11.5% — and none of that interest is deductible any more
The ATO's general interest charge is set quarterly and compounds daily. It is 11.43% for the quarter ending 30 September and rises to 11.51% from 1 October. Since 1 July 2025, GIC and shortfall interest charge incurred on or after that date are no longer deductible — regardless of which income year the underlying debt relates to — while interest incurred before 1 July 2025 remains deductible. For directors, Director Penalty Notices remain the main personal-exposure lever on unpaid PAYG withholding, GST and super.
Why it matters: For a taxable business, non-deductibility has quietly made an ATO payment plan an expensive form of finance. At a 25% company tax rate, a deductible 11.51% charge had an after-tax cost of about 8.6%; non-deductible, it stays at 11.51% — roughly a third more, with nothing on the ATO's side having changed. That makes it worth comparing the after-tax cost of ATO debt with whatever commercial finance is actually available, including fees, security and personal guarantees, rather than assuming the ATO is the cheap option. (For an income-tax-exempt charity, deductibility was never the issue; the compounding is.) The two board questions: what it costs after tax, and whether lodgements are up to date — lodgement status determines which type of DPN a director can receive.
Source: ATO — Denying deductions for ATO interest charges, ATO — General interest charge (GIC) rates
The thread across the first four items: a date on a government page is not a date in your systems. Two Support at Home changes, a Thriving Kids transition and an NDIS duty already a month old all require someone to change a billing rule, a retention setting or a service agreement. That happens because somebody made a list and worked through it — worth doing this week rather than next.
Four rule changes, one date, and a billing system that has to cut cleanly on Thursday.
PFL provides senior-level outsourced finance, management reporting, and AI automation for Australian NFP, NDIS, and SME organisations — including turning a quarter's worth of regulatory changes into the specific system, model and agreement changes they actually require.
Talk to PFL →- Department of Health, Disability and Ageing — Support at Home personal care contribution change
- My Aged Care — Support at Home personal care contribution changes
- Department of Health, Disability and Ageing — Funding for Support at Home aged care nurses' award wage increase
- My Aged Care — Support at Home funding changes from 1 October 2026
- Department of Health, Disability and Ageing — About the changes to the NDIS
- Department of Health, Disability and Ageing — Securing the NDIS for future generations timeline
- NDIS — Thriving Kids
- Department of Health, Disability and Ageing — Thriving Kids questions and answers
- ATO — Denying deductions for ATO interest charges
- ATO — General interest charge
- ATO — General interest charge (GIC) rates
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