The transport gap in aged care: what happens when the funding shifts?

For older people who’ve stopped driving, a ride to the doctor or shops can mean everything. As aged care funding shifts, community transport’s future remains uncertain, especially outside the major cities.

Ask an older person what keeps them independent, and the answer often isn’t a care plan or a support worker. It’s a lift. A ride to the doctor, to the shops, to a friend’s place. Without it, everything else starts to fall away.

That’s why a quieter question sitting underneath Australia’s aged care reforms matters so much: as funding shifts, where does community transport fit? Right now, the people who run those services say they don’t have a clear answer.

The quiet foundation of home care

Community transport rarely makes headlines, but it holds a lot of the system together. A care plan only works if the person can get to the appointment. A prescription only helps if someone can collect it. For older people who have stopped driving, community transport is often the difference between staying connected and becoming isolated at home.

It’s delivered largely by not-for-profit, charity, council and community groups, many running buses and cars with door-to-door pick-up. For people who can no longer drive or manage public transport, these services are the practical link to healthcare, groceries and social life.

The sector’s frustration is that transport is treated as an add-on rather than as the infrastructure that lets the rest of the system function. As one community transport provider put it, strip out the ride and the care plan around it stops being worth much.

What’s actually changing

Most of the recent reform attention has been on the new Support at Home program, which replaced Home Care Packages and Short-Term Restorative Care from 1 November 2025.

But community transport mostly sits under a different program: the Commonwealth Home Support Programme (CHSP). And CHSP is not moving yet. The Government has confirmed it will continue in its current form until at least 1 July 2027, having pushed the transition back to give providers more time to prepare. If you currently receive CHSP transport, meals or social support, those services continue as usual for now.

Two changes are underway in the background, though. From 1 November 2025, CHSP providers came under the new Aged Care Act for the first time, shifting their obligations and reporting from grant agreements into law. And the Department is running a community transport pricing pilot with a group of CHSP transport providers, gathering real-world data to design a new funding model ahead of the broader reforms.

For providers making long-term decisions about fleets, drivers and routes, that in-between period is the hard part. They’re being asked to plan for a future funding model that hasn’t been finalised yet.

The gap is widest outside the cities

Where you live changes the stakes entirely. In a capital city, a missed community bus might mean catching a train instead. In a rural town where the bus comes twice a week, if at all, there may be no alternative.

Advocates in the community transport sector point out that demand for home support is actually highest, per person, in medium-sized rural towns rather than the major cities, yet a large share of services remains concentrated in metropolitan areas. They estimate millions of Australians in the biggest cities alone lack easy access to frequent public transport, and note the picture is far starker in regional and remote communities.

The result is that when an older person in the bush hands in their licence, community transport is often the only thing standing between them and complete isolation. That makes any uncertainty about its future funding felt most sharply in exactly the places with the fewest fallback options.

What it means for you

If you or someone you care for relies on community transport, the practical message right now is reassuring: CHSP services continue as they are until at least mid-2027, so there’s no immediate change to how you book or use them.

The longer story is worth watching. How transport is funded and priced under the reformed system will shape how available, affordable and reliable these services are in the years ahead, particularly in regional areas. It’s a good example of why the detail of aged care reform matters, not just the headline programs.

In the meantime, it’s worth knowing what’s available in your area, because the options go well beyond a single service.