The most common mistake a business makes on its first Support at Home client is guessing at the rate. A Geelong home cleaning business has three instincts pulling in different directions: charge the normal commercial rate, undercut it because "it's government money and there'll be volume", or pad it because there's paperwork involved. The owner has heard a competitor across town win aged care clients without being the cheapest quote, and wants to know what he understands that she doesn't.

This example is illustrative, created to show how the local partner model works in practice.

Pricing for Support at Home clients isn't a different discipline from pricing anywhere else. The buyer thinks differently, though, and the rules add a government layer.

Start with the rules: government price arrangements apply

Under Support at Home, government price arrangements apply to funded services. We deliberately don't quote caps or rates here (they're set by government and subject to change), so treat the current Department of Health, Disability and Ageing guidance as your source of truth, and ask your registered provider how the arrangements apply to your service type.

Before you quote, run this check.

  • Confirmed the government price arrangement for your service type on the Department's current guidance?
  • Set a rate you can hold for a year of weekly visits without cutting corners?
  • Written it in everyday wording, with no hidden extras?
  • Checked your invoice will match the quote, line for line?

What self-managing clients compare

Self-managing clients choose their own workers and suppliers, so you're being compared, and not only on rate. The comparison runs on three axes:

  • Is the rate fair and clearly stated?
  • Do you turn up when you said you would, every time? For an older person, a no-show can be the difference between a safe week and an unsafe one.
  • Does the client know the person walking through the door, and do they like them?

Rate gets you considered. Reliability and relationship get you kept. Because clients spend from a finite quarterly budget, they think in terms of what a care-hour is worth.

Transparency is a pricing strategy

Clients managing their own budget reward pricing that's easy to understand. If a client has to guess what a visit will cost, they'll drift to someone who makes it obvious.

Don't race to the bottom. A rate you can't sustain produces exactly the failures (rushed jobs, cancelled visits, staff churn) that self-managing clients punish hardest. Price for the quality you're known for, then let reliability do the selling.

Keeping your pricing power in the partner model

In some arrangements, a head provider sets your rate and takes the client relationship with it. Partner with Care's local partner model is built the other way: you keep your brand, your client relationships and your pricing power, while PWC, as the registered backbone, carries the compliance, claiming and government-facing work, and pays you with nothing to chase. How that's structured is at become a partner; the philosophy is at why us.