The End-of-Life Pathway: support to stay at home, together
Last updated 20 August 2026
The pathway amount on this page is published by the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing as an approximation and is current at 20 August 2026.
If you’re reading this, you may be arranging care for someone you love in the hardest weeks of their life — and yours. We’ve tried to make this page calm, clear and complete, so you only have to read it once. Take it at your own pace.
The short version
- The End-of-Life Pathway provides around $25,000 over 12 weeks (extendable to 16) so that someone expected to be in roughly their last three months of life can be cared for, and die, at home — if that is what they want.
- Access is fast-tracked: about 15 days from application in most cases, not the months an ordinary package can take.
- It works alongside palliative care from health services — it doesn’t replace doctors and palliative nurses, it surrounds them with practical help at home.
- Anyone can start the process through My Aged Care (1800 200 422), and a family member can do it on the person’s behalf.
What this pathway is for
Most Australians, asked where they would want to spend their last weeks, say at home. What makes that hard is rarely the medicine — palliative care teams are good at coming to the house. It’s everything else: someone to help with showering and turning, equipment like a suitable bed, nights when family carers need relief, meals, and enough hands that the people who love the person can spend their time being with them rather than only doing for them.
That everything-else is what the End-of-Life Pathway funds. It provides around $25,000 over 12 weeks — a deliberately generous amount, because care needs in the last weeks of life are intensive. It can pay for personal care, nursing, overnight and respite support, equipment, and the practical help that keeps a household running. If the person is already receiving Support at Home services, the pathway adds to what’s in place; if they’ve never been in the aged care system at all, it can be their first and only contact with it.
The pathway is for people whom a doctor assesses as being in roughly their last three months of life, who want to remain at home. If twelve weeks pass and more time is given — which happens, and is never a problem to be apologised for — the support can be extended to sixteen weeks.
How it works alongside palliative care
It helps to think of two teams around the bed. The palliative care team — GP, palliative specialists, community palliative nurses — manages symptoms, pain and medical decisions, funded through the health system as it always has been. The Support at Home provider delivers the daily care around them: personal care, help overnight, equipment, domestic support, and a care manager who coordinates with the clinicians. Neither replaces the other, and the best providers are practised at working in step with palliative teams — sharing notes, adjusting rosters as needs change week to week, and being unobtrusive in a house that is also, at that moment, a family’s private world.
Clinical care, including nursing and care management, is free for everyone under Support at Home. Other services carry the usual modest contributions depending on the person’s situation; if money is a worry at such a time, hardship provisions exist, and no one should go without care over an inability to contribute.
You do not need the person who is unwell to make the phone calls. A son, daughter, partner or friend can contact My Aged Care on their behalf, with their agreement (or their representative’s). Have the doctor’s details handy — the application rests on a medical assessment of prognosis, and hospital palliative teams and GPs complete these often. They will know what’s needed.
How to arrange it, step by step
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Talk with the doctor
Ask the GP, treating specialist or hospital palliative care team whether the End-of-Life Pathway is appropriate now. They provide the clinical evidence about prognosis that supports the application.
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Contact My Aged Care
Call 1800 200 422 (or apply at myagedcare.gov.au) and say you are seeking the End-of-Life Pathway. Say it plainly — the phrase itself moves the application into the fast-tracked stream. The assessment is designed to be quick and can be done with minimal burden on the person.
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Approval — usually within about 15 days
Most decisions arrive in around fifteen days. There is no waitlist queue for this pathway. If circumstances are deteriorating faster than the process, tell My Aged Care and the assessor directly — urgency is taken into account.
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Choose a provider and begin
You’ll choose a Support at Home provider to deliver the care. This is worth a little care in itself: ask whether they have delivered end-of-life support at home before, how they work with palliative care teams, and how quickly they can start. Services, equipment and overnight support can then be put in place around what the family is already doing.
What it can look like at home
Every family arranges this differently, and there is no right way. For some, the funding mostly buys overnight care, so a wife who has been awake for weeks can sleep. For others it’s morning and evening personal care, a proper bed and pressure mattress, and a few hours of respite so an elderly husband can walk the dog and cry in peace. The care plan should follow the person’s wishes and the family’s rhythms — not the other way around. A good care manager will ask what matters most and build around it, and will keep adjusting as the weeks pass.
It is also allowed to change your mind. If home stops being the right place — symptoms change, or it simply becomes too much — moving to a hospice or hospital is not a failure, and nothing about having used the pathway counts against anyone.
If you’d like a hand choosing
Some providers do end-of-life care at home with real skill and tenderness; experience matters here more than anywhere. If it would help, tell us where you are and we can point you to providers who do this well. There’s no obligation, and no rush from us — whenever you’re ready.
Questions families ask
Dad already has a Support at Home package. Does he have to give it up?
No. The End-of-Life Pathway provides additional, separate funding on top of an existing package — it recognises that needs rise sharply in the last weeks. His existing services continue, and the same provider can usually deliver both.
What if she lives longer than three months?
Then you have been given more time together, and the system is built to cope with that. The pathway runs for 12 weeks and can be extended to 16, and if support is needed beyond it, an assessment for ongoing services can follow. No one asks for money back, and no one is penalised for outliving a prognosis.
Does this replace the palliative care team?
No — it works beside them. Doctors and palliative nurses continue exactly as before, through the health system. The pathway funds the daily care and practical support around their visits, and a good provider coordinates closely with the clinical team.
Will it cost the family anything?
Clinical care — nursing and care management — is free for everyone. Other services, like personal care or domestic help, carry the usual means-based contributions, which for most pensioners are small percentages. If contributing would cause hardship at such a time, say so: hardship provisions exist for exactly this.
We’re not sure we can manage this at home. Is that all right?
Completely. Caring for someone at the end of life is demanding, and the right answer is different for every family. The pathway exists to make home possible for those who want it — not to make anyone feel they must. Talking it through with the palliative care team, honestly, is the best starting point, and whatever you decide together is the right decision.
Sources
- Department of Health, Disability and Ageing, health.gov.au — Support at Home short-term pathways, including the End-of-Life Pathway.
- Support at Home Program Manual — End-of-Life Pathway eligibility, funding and timeframes.
- My Aged Care, myagedcare.gov.au — applying for the End-of-Life Pathway, accessed 20 August 2026.