What changed for aged care websites on 1 November 2025?
Two things changed at once: the new Aged Care Act commenced, replacing the Aged Care Act 1997, and the Support at Home program replaced the Home Care Packages Program and Short-Term Restorative Care. Any aged care website written before that date probably uses words families no longer hear from assessors.
The Australian Government's health department describes the new Act as rights-based, with strengthened Quality Standards for registered providers. For a website, that shifts the tone. Pages that once talked about “packages” and “levels” now need to talk about classifications, quarterly budgets and what the older person can expect as a right. The Commonwealth Home Support Program has been extended to 30 June 2029, according to the department's Support at Home page, so providers delivering CHSP services still need to describe that program accurately alongside Support at Home.
Good aged care website design treats this as a content project first and a design project second. Before we touch layout, we list every page that mentions the old program, every PDF brochure still linked from the site, and every form field that asks about package levels. That audit usually takes a day and it shapes the whole quote.
- Pages or PDFs that still say “Home Care Package level 1–4” as if it were current
- Short-Term Restorative Care pages with no mention of the change
- Enquiry forms asking which package level someone holds
- Old fee schedules that no longer match what you publish on My Aged Care
How should an aged care website explain Support at Home to families?
Explain it in the order a family lives through it: assessment, classification, budget, choosing a provider, agreeing prices, and paying any contribution. Short pages in that sequence beat one long page of program rules.
Families usually meet Support at Home through a worried phone call about a parent. They do not want the program manual; they want to know what happens next. So the explainer set we build for a home care provider has a single hub page with a six-step diagram and one short page per step. Each step page opens with a one-sentence answer, then explains what your team does to help at that stage. The department's material describes eight ongoing classifications with set budgets, and the explainer should point to the official classification and budget details rather than restating figures that change.
Contributions deserve their own page because that is where anxiety sits. The department's charging guidance says clinical supports such as nursing attract no participant contribution, while independence and everyday living services carry contributions based on an income and assets assessment. It also notes that from 1 October 2026 personal care moves into the clinical supports category, so participants will no longer pay contributions for it. A dated sentence like that is exactly the kind of detail families quote back to you, so we mark each program fact with the date it was last checked.
Hub page
A six-step overview with a phone number beside every step, not only at the bottom.
Step pages
Assessment, classification and budget, choosing a provider, service agreement, contributions, reviews and changes.
Aged care website design after Home Care Packages: cleaning up legacy wording
Keep one clearly labelled page about the transition for people who held a Home Care Package before November 2025, and update everything else to Support at Home language. Mixed wording across pages makes a provider look behind the times.
Search engines still send people who type “home care package provider” to aged care websites, and plenty of families use the old words for years after a change. Deleting every mention would lose those readers. The better aged care website design pattern is a single page titled something like “Had a Home Care Package? What changed for you”, which uses the old term deliberately and then walks the reader to the current explainer set. Every other page uses the new vocabulary.
We handle old URLs with permanent redirects, so a bookmarked “level 2 package” page lands on the matching Support at Home page rather than an error. We also check the Google Business Profile description and any directory listings you control, because a site that says one thing and a listing that says another undoes the effort.
If your team runs therapy or allied health services under the same brand, those pages follow different advertising rules; the allied health website design page explains the split.
What must a Support at Home provider publish about prices on its website?
The department's charging guidance tells Support at Home providers to publish the most frequently charged price on their website and on My Aged Care, and says prices must be all inclusive, reasonable and transparent and agreed before charging. Your website's price page is therefore a compliance item, not a marketing extra.
From an aged care website design point of view, three things make a price page work. First, show totals: the ACCC's general guidance on displaying prices says businesses must show the total price as a single figure, so avoid a base rate followed by surcharges further down the page. Second, date it, because prices change and families screenshot pages. Third, make it match My Aged Care exactly; a mismatch invites a complaint before the first visit.
We build the price list as a structured table that your finance officer edits in one place, and the same data feeds any service page that mentions a price. When the table changes, the “prices last updated” line changes with it. We do not decide your prices or interpret the pricing rules for you; your finance lead or adviser confirms what goes in the table, and we make sure the site shows it clearly and consistently.
- One price table, edited in one place, shown wherever prices appear
- Totals families can compare, with units such as per hour or per visit
- A visible “last updated” date
- A link to your My Aged Care listing so families can cross-check
Should a residential aged care website display its Star Rating?
Yes, if you run residential homes, show the current overall Star Rating on each home's page and link to the official listing. Hiding it rarely helps, because families check the Find a provider tool on My Aged Care anyway.
The department's Star Ratings page describes ratings for residential aged care built from four sub-categories: residents' experience, compliance, staffing and quality measures, with data updated in regular extracts. Star Ratings apply to residential homes; the same page does not describe ratings for home care, so a Support at Home provider should not borrow star graphics for its home services.
The honest way to show a rating is to present it as it appears officially, with the date, and let the home page explain what you are doing in any sub-category where you are working to improve. A home rated three stars that explains its staffing plan often reads as more trustworthy than a home that shows only glowing photographs. We build the rating as an editable field with a link to the official listing, so nobody on your team is tempted to round it up, and so it is quick to update after each new data release.
Keeping My Aged Care, Google and your aged care website saying the same thing
Your service list, service areas, prices and contact details should read the same on your website, your My Aged Care listing and your Google Business Profile. Families and discharge planners compare all three, and so do search engines.
Inconsistency creeps in because different people own different listings. The intake manager updates My Aged Care, marketing edits the website, and a regional manager answers Google reviews. Part of every aged care website design project we run is a one-page “source of truth” sheet listing each fact and where it appears. When a service or suburb changes, the sheet tells your team which three places to update.
For a group with several homes, we give each home its own page with a stable URL and structured data for the organisation and location, so search engines connect the right phone number to the right home. Where you deliver home care from a hub office into surrounding towns, the Google profile is usually set up as a service-area business, and the website's region pages list only towns your care workers actually reach.
Accessible aged care website design for older readers
Build to WCAG 2.2 level AA and then go further on type size, contrast and simplicity, because many readers are in their eighties, use a tablet held at arm's length, or rely on a son or daughter reading aloud.
The W3C's WCAG 2.2 added success criteria for target size and focus visibility that suit this audience well. On top of those, we set body text at 18 pixels or larger, keep line length short, use real buttons with words rather than icons alone, and never auto-rotate carousels or play video with sound. The phone number sits at the top of every page in large type and works as a tap-to-call link.
We also test with the settings older users actually switch on: browser zoom at 200%, larger system fonts on iPad and Android tablets, and high-contrast modes. Forms keep labels above fields, avoid time limits, and show errors in words next to the field. None of this makes the site look clinical. Warm photography, a clear typeface and plenty of white space read as calm and professional to every age group.
- 18px+ body text and headings with clear size steps
- Tap targets comfortably larger than the WCAG 2.2 minimum
- No auto-moving content, no pop-ups over the phone number
- Tested at 200% zoom and with VoiceOver and TalkBack
What enquiry flow works best on an aged care website?
Make the phone number the first option and a short call-back request the second. Most aged care enquiries come from an adult child in a hurry, and they want a person, not a long form.
The call-back form we build asks four things: who is enquiring (for myself, for a family member, as a health professional), the best number, the best time to call, and whether the person already has an assessment outcome or referral from My Aged Care. That last question routes the enquiry to the right person on your intake team without asking for health details on the website at all.
Discharge planners and GPs get their own short page with a direct intake line and an email address for referrals, because they will not fill a consumer form. For residential homes, a separate “book a tour” form asks for preferred days and the number of visitors. Every form confirms on screen and by email what happens next and when, which cuts repeat calls. Submissions go to a restricted inbox or straight into your care management system if it accepts web enquiries, and we avoid storing them on the web server.
Family member
Call-back request with best time, relationship and assessment status.
Health professional
Direct intake line and referral email, no consumer form.
Job seeker
Separate careers form so recruitment never clogs the client inbox.
How should an aged care website present rights, feedback and complaints?
Give rights and complaints a real page, linked from the footer and the main menu, that explains how to raise a concern with you and that people can also contact the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission. Under a rights-based Act, a buried complaints link looks evasive.
The new Act includes a Statement of Rights for older people, and families increasingly read a provider's site for evidence that those rights shape daily practice. Rather than pasting legal text, we help you write a short page on what those rights look like in your service: how clients choose workers, how care plans are reviewed, how cultural and language needs are met, and how a concern is handled from first call to resolution.
A plain complaints flow on the page helps: who to call, what happens within the first days, and how to escalate outside your organisation. Your quality manager approves every word, and we link to the official Commission site rather than paraphrasing its process. This is one of the areas where we deliberately keep the design simple, with a clear heading, numbered steps and a phone number, because the reader may be upset.
Which pages does an aged care provider website need?
A home care provider needs a home page, the Support at Home explainer set, one page per service type, a price list, service areas, rights and complaints, about, careers and contact. A residential provider adds one page per home, room types, visiting and a tour booking page.
The mistake we see most often is organising the site around internal departments. Families think in situations: “Mum is coming home from hospital”, “Dad can't manage the garden any more”, “we need respite for a fortnight”. So on the home page we offer three or four situation-based entry points, and each leads into the right service pages. The formal service names still appear for assessors and search engines, but lower on the page.
Groups that offer both home care and residential care should keep the two as clear sections with their own navigation, because the questions, prices and urgency are different. A retirement village operated by the same group usually gets its own section as well, since its readers are often independent buyers rather than care recipients.
- Home with situation-based entry points and a large phone number
- Support at Home hub and step pages
- Services, price list, service areas
- Homes (residential), room types, visiting, tour booking
- Rights and complaints, about, careers, contact, privacy
How much does aged care website design cost in Australia?
With BtechWaleTech, aged care website design starts from US$150 for a site of up to 100 pages, which covers most single-region home care providers and small residential operators. Multi-home groups with many region pages start from US$300. Other developers' quotes vary widely, and the gap usually comes from content work and integrations rather than design.
What moves the number: how much of the Support at Home explainer copy needs drafting from scratch, how many homes or regions need genuinely distinct pages, whether enquiries post into a care management system, and whether you want a family portal. Photography is another variable; we work with photos you supply and have consent to use, and we do not visit sites to shoot them.
Running costs such as the domain, hosting and email are paid by you directly to the supplier, and the quote lists each one. After launch you get two months of maintenance free, then care continues from US$120/mo if you want it. The website redesign services page explains how we handle an existing site's URLs and content when rebuilding rather than starting fresh.
How long does an aged care website rebuild take?
Build time is one to two weeks for a typical home care site once copy is approved, and three to five weeks for a multi-home group. Approval inside your organisation, especially of price and rights wording, usually takes longer than the build.
A realistic schedule starts with the legacy-wording audit and a page map in the first few days. We then build the price table and one explainer page first, because those carry the most regulatory weight and your finance and quality leads need time with them. While they review, we build the remaining pages on a private preview link. Accessibility testing and redirect checks happen in the final days, followed by launch, a sitemap submission in Google Search Console and analytics setup.
If your board meets monthly and must approve public wording, plan the timeline around that meeting. We would rather hold a finished site for a week than publish a price page nobody has signed off.
How to choose a developer for aged care website design
Choose someone who asks about your price list, your My Aged Care listing and your complaints process in the first call. If the conversation is only about colours and stock photos, the site will look fresh and still be out of date.
Useful questions to ask any developer: How will you handle old Home Care Package URLs? Where will enquiry data go, and who can read it? Can our finance officer update prices without calling you? How do you test for older users? Will the domain, hosting and analytics be in our name? What happens when program rules change again? Their answers tell you whether they understand an aged care website as a living compliance surface.
Red flags: a template that auto-plays video or slides, a contact form that emails a free webmail address, star graphics added to home care pages, accessibility overlays sold as a fix, and any contract where the developer keeps the hosting or code. None of those belongs on an aged care website.
Privacy and hosting for an aged care website
Keep health information off the public website wherever possible, send enquiries over HTTPS to a restricted inbox or your care system, and hold the domain and hosting in your own name with two-factor sign-in. Your privacy obligations stay with you, and your own adviser should confirm the setup.
Most aged care websites do not need to store anything sensitive. A call-back form that asks for a name, number, relationship and assessment status collects far less than a form asking about diagnoses, and the detailed conversation happens on the phone. Where a family portal or document upload is genuinely needed, we treat it as a separate custom project with access controls, encryption, audit logs and hosting chosen with your privacy adviser.
The public site itself we usually build as a fast static front end, which has no database for anyone to break into and loads quickly on older tablets. Analytics are configured to avoid collecting more than you need, and the privacy page is written with your adviser. We do not provide legal advice or sign off on compliance; we build so that your obligations are easier to meet and document.
Aged care website design for local search and AI answers
Families search by suburb and situation, such as “home care near Ballarat” or “respite care Wollongong”, and increasingly ask AI assistants the same question. Clear local pages, consistent listings and self-contained answers to common questions give you the best chance in both.
For AI Overviews and assistant answers, the pages that get quoted tend to answer one question per section, directly, with a date where the answer can change. The Support at Home step pages described above are built that way on purpose. We add structured data for your organisation, each home or office, and your FAQs, and keep titles descriptive rather than clever.
Local search depends on a Google Business Profile for each home or office, the same details everywhere, and genuine reviews gathered fairly. Ongoing SEO with us starts from US$150/mo, though nobody can honestly guarantee rankings. The local SEO services for Australian businesses page covers that work, and region pages are only written where you truly deliver care.
Working with an aged care website team in India from Australia
You talk with us on WhatsApp and video, and our morning is your afternoon: 1 pm to 5 pm in Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane during AEST is 8:30 am to 12:30 pm in India. Adelaide and Darwin sit four hours ahead of India in winter, and Perth only two and a half.
The first fortnight on an aged care website design project runs like this. In the first days, a call with whoever owns the price list and the complaints process, followed by an itemised quote in USD in about two working days. After you approve it in writing, we audit legacy wording and send the page map. By the end of the first week you see the price page and one Support at Home explainer on a preview link. In the second week the remaining templates arrive, with a list of copy still waiting on your side.
Invoices come from India in USD and are paid by Wise, bank wire or PayPal. Your domain, hosting and code sit in your organisation's name from day one. We do not visit homes, take photos, or advise on aged care law or pricing policy; we build and maintain the site and the tools around it.
Worked example: aged care website design for a regional home care provider
Picture a hypothetical home care provider based in Bendigo with forty care workers covering surrounding towns, plus a small respite house. Its website still lists four package levels, links a fee PDF from 2024, and has a contact form asking for a Medicare number.
The rebuild would start with a Support at Home hub and six step pages, a “Had a Home Care Package?” transition page, and permanent redirects from each old level page. The fee PDF becomes a dated price table matching the My Aged Care listing, edited by the finance officer. The contact form shrinks to four fields with no health identifiers. Service-area pages cover only the towns the rosters actually reach, and the respite house gets its own page with a tour request form.
That scope fits comfortably in the static plan from US$150 and would typically take about two weeks after the provider approves the copy. If the provider later opens a second hub in the Goldfields, adding it is an extension, not a rebuild. This scenario is illustrative only and does not describe a real client.