DVA Continence Products: A Veterans Guide to RAP Funding
By Kim Hando
, Owner & Founder
│ 02 September 2026
Last reviewed: 02 September 2026
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There is nothing to buy and claim back with DVA continence products. The Rehabilitation Appliances Program does not work like a rebate. A health provider assesses the clinical need, prescribes the products, and DVA arranges the supply through its contracted suppliers at no cost to the veteran. DVA puts it plainly: if you buy an item without a clinical assessment and prescription, it may not reimburse you afterwards.
That single detail changes how a veteran should approach the whole thing, and it is the piece that gets missed.
Does DVA fund continence products for veterans?
Yes. The Department of Veterans' Affairs funds continence products for eligible Veteran Card holders through the Rehabilitation Appliances Program, known as RAP. Access rests on an assessed clinical need and on what your card covers. A suitably qualified health provider prescribes the products, and DVA arranges supply through contracted national suppliers.
RAP is broader than continence. It supplies aids, equipment and home or vehicle modifications meant to keep a veteran independent at home, and DVA groups bathing, toileting, continence and personal hygiene products together as one category of aids within it. If you are weighing this up against the other routes, our guide to continence funding in Australia sets out how the schemes sit alongside each other.
What DVA continence products cover
The DVA RAP continence guidelines define continence products as a range of products such as pads, pants, catheters and bed and chair protection, to manage urinary and/or faecal incontinence. Note the phrasing. It is an open list rather than a fixed catalogue, and the items sit on the RAP Schedule under codes AD00 and AD01 to AD28.
If your question is simply does DVA cover incontinence pads, the answer is yes. Pads are named in DVA's own definition, and in practice the everyday items are the absorbent ones: pads, pull-up pants, slips and bed and chair protection. These are the products a person uses daily and reorders regularly.
Catheters sit in a different category. They are therapeutic goods listed on the ARTG, and they are prescribed and arranged clinically rather than chosen off a shelf. If a catheter is part of your care, that conversation belongs with your GP, urologist or continence nurse, not with a product page.
One detail worth knowing: DVA states there is currently no Australian Standard for continence products. Absorbency ratings and sizing are not set against a single national benchmark, which is exactly why the assessment matters more than the name on the packet.
Who is eligible for continence products for veterans
Eligibility for DVA continence products turns on two things at once: an assessed clinical need, and the card you hold.
A Veteran Card - All Conditions, colloquially known as the Veteran Gold Card, covers treatment for all medical conditions. For continence products, the requirement is a clinical need assessed by a suitably qualified health provider.
A Veteran Card - Specific Conditions, colloquially known as the Veteran White Card, works differently. DVA requires the clinical need for the prescribed products to relate to an accepted condition, or to a condition covered under non-liability health care. Non-liability health care funds treatment for certain conditions, including all mental health conditions, without you having to prove your service caused them.
DVA names the health providers who can prescribe continence products under RAP: a GP or Local Medical Officer, a continence nurse adviser (who may be a registered nurse or a physiotherapist continence adviser), an occupational therapist, a registered nurse, a urologist, or a physiotherapist. If you have never had a continence assessment, our guide to finding and working with a continence nurse covers what that appointment involves and how to arrange one.
The residential aged care exclusion
This part of veterans' incontinence funding in Australia is easy to misread, so it is worth stating precisely.
Under the Australian National Aged Care Classification, residential aged care homes are required to provide aids and equipment to meet each resident's clinical needs, as specified in Schedule 1 of the Quality of Care Principles. DVA's position is that it does not seek to duplicate those arrangements. A veteran living permanently in a residential aged care home therefore receives continence products from the home rather than from RAP.
There is a documented exception. If a resident has a clinical need for an item the home is unable to provide, or the item is personalised or customised, DVA will consider it case by case through prior approval. DVA maintains a RAP in Residential Aged Care List setting out which items may be supplied to residents, and it asks the aged care home to check first whether it is funded to provide the item itself.
If you are working out who pays for what in a facility setting, our article on who pays for continence products in aged care covers those funding lines in more detail.
RAP and CAPS: a two-part test, not a flat exclusion
Services Australia lists this among the circumstances in which you cannot be paid under the Continence Aids Payment Scheme. You cannot get paid under CAPS if you hold a Veteran Card-All Conditions or Veteran Card-Specific Conditions and can get help through the Rehabilitation Appliances Program.
Read that carefully, because it is a two-part test. It is not simply holding a card. It is holding one of those cards and being able to get help through RAP. Services Australia tells people whose circumstances change to call the Continence Aids Payment line about applying.
The same list rules out CAPS for people residing permanently in an Australian Government funded aged care facility, and for people whose NDIS funding package already includes continence support. Our complete CAPS guide covers that scheme's eligibility and payment mechanics in full, and CAPS vs NDIS continence funding sets out which of the two applies where.
How a veteran arranges DVA continence supply
The DVA Rehabilitation Appliances Program continence pathway runs like this.
Start with your GP. Tell them you may need continence products. They will either assess your clinical needs or refer you to a health professional who will. Nothing else moves until that assessment is done.
Your prescriber then completes DVA's continence products order form, the D0988. For an All Conditions card holder, the form goes directly to one of DVA's contracted national suppliers, whose details are on the form. For a Specific Conditions card holder, the prescriber checks eligibility with DVA first, and the supplier seeks prior approval where it is required. Ask for a copy of the completed form either way, because it is what you reorder against.
Four things worth writing down:
- A completed direct order form lets you obtain the prescribed products for two years. After that you need a new assessment and a new form.
- You can order up to three months' supply at one time.
- Place orders directly with the supplier and allow two weeks for processing. Reorder before you are down to the last packet.
- If your circumstances change, tell the supplier. DVA's own examples include needing additional items, no longer needing items on the form, entirely new requirements, a change of address, and a permanent move into an aged care home. That list is expressly open, so raise anything material.
The choice of supplier is made by you and your prescriber together, from DVA's contracted list. Comfort First is not part of that arrangement, and we would rather say so plainly than have a veteran assume otherwise.
If RAP is not open to you, or you are buying for yourself
Not everyone reading this is the veteran. Some are a spouse, an adult child or a carer, buying continence products with their own money while the RAP question gets sorted out, or after it has been answered no.
The other pathways are real. CAPS is the main Commonwealth payment for people with permanent and severe incontinence. The NDIS funds continence products for eligible participants under Core Supports, and our guide to NDIS continence products explains what that covers. Our guide to state continence schemes across Australia covers the state and territory picture, and for a plain-language overview of the lot, start with incontinence pads and government subsidy.
If you are caring for a parent through this, caring for an elderly parent with incontinence deals with the practical and emotional side that funding articles skip.
For self-funders, fit matters as much as absorbency. Buying a size up for years on the assumption that a bigger product holds more does not work. A pad or pull-up that gaps at the leg leaks whatever the absorbency figure says, and Comfort First sizes by waist measurement, so a tape measure settles it.
Where to get help
For anything about your card, your eligibility or a RAP decision, call DVA on 1800 VETERAN (1800 838 372). Your GP, continence nurse or aged care home can call the DVA Health Provider Line on 1800 550 457, which is the line for providers rather than for veterans.
For clinical continence advice, the National Continence Helpline on 1800 33 00 66 is free and staffed by continence nurse advisers. Continence Health Australia holds the wider consumer information. For CAPS, Services Australia administers the scheme, and its eligibility rules are the authority on who cannot be paid. DVA's own Rehabilitation Appliances Program page sets out what RAP supplies and how to get it.
If you are buying your own products while any of this is being worked out, we would rather you got the fit right first. Comfort First sends a free sample pack so you can test comfort and fit before committing to a carton, and the full Comfort First range is there when you are ready. Call 03 5443 2239 or email sales@comfortfirst.au and you will speak to someone at our East Bendigo warehouse who knows the products. Australian owned and run, and a registered NDIS provider.