About the Scheme

If you have a concern about the care you or someone else is receiving from an Australian Government subsidised residential or community aged care service, it is important that you talk about it.

The Aged Care Complaints Scheme provides a free service for people to raise their concerns about the quality of care or services being delivered to people receiving residential or community aged care services that are subsidised by the Australian Government.

By helping people to resolve their concerns and working with aged care providers to identify quality improvements, we are working towards our vision: To improve and protect the safety and wellbeing of aged care recipients.

We can receive complaints about Australian Government subsidised residential and community aged care services. Complaints can relate to care, catering, financial matters, hygiene, equipment, security, activities, choice, comfort and safety or other matters related to the responsibilities of an approved provider.

We can refer complaints that fall outside of our scope to other organisations, professional registration boards or other complaints bodies. If you lodge a complaint with us and we can’t help you, we will try to identify who may be able to help you.

We encourage you to raise your concern with the approved provider because local resolution can achieve a fast and sustainable outcome. We can support you to do this.

If that approach is not possible, we can examine your concern. Approaches range from simple, relatively quick and informal approaches, to more formal and lengthy processes.

Go to the Contact us page for information about how to lodge a complaint with us.

Aged care in Australia

More than 343,000 Australians receive some type of Australian Government subsidised aged care service, and every year, this number is increasing. In 2009-10, 214,418 people received permanent residential care and 69,456 people received a community aged care package.

Most residential and community aged care services receive funding from the Australian Government. Other services receive funding from private organisations or state or territory governments. Aged care providers who receive funding from the Australian Government are called ‘approved providers’.

Approved providers must meet a set of responsibilities listed in the Aged Care Act 1997, which outlines the standards of care and services that approved providers must provide to care recipients.

Most aged care providers do their best to provide quality care and services for older Australians. However, issues can occur so we need to ensure that people can raise their concerns in a constructive and safe way.

Complaints serve an important purpose because they can help providers immediately improve or identify opportunities to improve services and quality of care to aged care recipients.