Turning 65 With NDIS Continence Funding: Staying, Leaving and What Changes
By Kim Hando
, Owner & Founder
│ 02 September 2026
Last reviewed: 02 September 2026
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Last reviewed: 2 September 2026
The question arrives months before the birthday, sometimes from an adult daughter doing the maths on her father's plan. He turns 65 in March, the plan runs to July, and nobody has told them what happens to the pull-ups after that. The answer is better than families expect. The rules for the NDIS over 65 protect people who are already in the scheme.
What does change is narrower than the rumour suggests, and it is not the birthday. It turns on the move into aged care, and the next section sets that out in the terms the NDIS Act uses.
This article covers only that interface and how to keep continence supply steady through it. Our complete guide to NDIS continence funding in Australia covers the scheme as a whole, and if you are still weighing up whether the NDIS is even your pathway, start with which continence funding scheme applies to you.
Does the NDIS stop at 65?
No. Turning 65 does not end NDIS participation. If you are already a participant, the birthday on its own does not change your plan or the continence consumables funding inside it. Under the NDIS Act, what ends participation is commencing ongoing funded aged care services on a permanent basis for the first time after 65, other than under a specialist aged care program.
The Act carves out aged care accessed under a specialist aged care program, a term it defines by reference to the Aged Care Act 2024. The NDIA is the body that confirms how any of this applies to a particular plan, and the body to ask about any other way participation can end at any age.
That is the shape of the rule, and the reason it causes so much anxiety is that it gets compressed in conversation into "the NDIS stops at 65", which is not true. Age matters enormously for getting in. It matters very little for staying in.
The entry rule and the continuation rule are not the same thing
Two separate rules get muddled together, and separating them clears up most of the confusion about the NDIS and aged care over 65.
The entry rule is about age at the point of entry. To become a participant you generally need to have made your access request before you turn 65, alongside the residence requirements and either the disability requirements or the early intervention requirements. Miss that window and the NDIS is generally closed as a starting point, and the NDIA is the body to ask about your own circumstances.
The continuation rule is about what happens afterwards, and it is far more generous. Once you are a participant you can keep accessing the NDIS after 65, depending on your needs. Turning 65 on the NDIS does not of itself move you across to aged care. Your plan keeps running on its own cycle.
It is the start of aged care that ends participation, not the steps leading up to it. If a My Aged Care assessment is booked or a place on a waiting list has come up and you want to know where that leaves the plan, ask your planner or local area coordinator to confirm it before anything changes.
That distinction decides which system a person belongs to. If continence needs first arise at 65 or older and the person has never been an NDIS participant, the NDIS is not the door. My Aged Care is the assessment pathway, and the Continence Aids Payment Scheme (CAPS) is worth checking, though it carries eligibility gates of its own that we come back to below. If someone was already a participant before 65, none of that applies and the plan simply continues.
What the NDIS over 65 rules leave unchanged for continence supply
For a participant who stays, the procurement side is genuinely unchanged.
What your plan funds for continence products is set through your plan. Which part of your plan that funding sits in, and what it is called, depends on the plan structure you are on, so the label may not match the one in an older article, including ours. Your plan manager can tell you what yours currently holds, where it sits, and how far into the plan year the budget runs. Reaching Age Pension age, which is 67, is a separate question again, and your plan manager is the person to ask how the two sit together in your case.
The products themselves do not change either. The range you have been using stays available in the same way: pull-up pants, slips, Underpads Small, Underpads Regular and the Maxi Bed Mat. What your own plan will fund is a question for your planner rather than something an article can settle.
Your ordering route does not change either. If you buy through a registered NDIS provider, the account, the reorder rhythm and the invoicing all carry on as they were. Plan reviews continue, and your planner or plan manager can confirm when yours is due. The usual advice applies about keeping your continence funding current at plan review as needs shift with age.
The short answer for most participants: nothing operational needs to happen on the birthday. If you want the full picture of assessment and ordering, what the NDIS covers and how to access it sets that out separately.
The first common case: a permanent move into residential aged care
Whether a particular arrangement counts as a permanent move into residential aged care is a question for your planner before anything is signed, including a short respite stay. Admissions get signed at the end of hard weeks, and this is the document worth slowing down for.
Continence aids inside a residential aged care home are part of the care the home is funded to provide, and who pays once someone is a permanent resident sets that out in full. The aged care service list requires a home to supply as many continence aids as a resident needs, so the supply question moves from your plan to the provider rather than disappearing. Fees and contributions more broadly are a My Aged Care and Services Australia question, and the detail is changing with the aged care reforms, so confirm those with them directly.
Worth knowing before anyone plans around it: the Continence Aids Payment Scheme is closed to people living permanently in an Australian Government funded aged care home, so it is not the fallback in this case.
What that looks like day to day still varies between homes, and these are fair questions to put to the home: which products are stocked, in which sizes, and whether a resident may keep using a product they are already settled on.
Families going through this alongside everything else may find caring for an elderly parent with incontinence more useful for the human side of the move.
The second common case: taking up Support at Home permanently
The other version is quieter, because it does not involve moving house.
Support at Home is the Australian Government's aged care program for help at home. It was introduced in November 2025 and replaced the Home Care Packages Program and the Short-term Restorative Care Programme, so if you are reading older material that talks about home care packages, that is the program it means. My Aged Care publishes the current Support at Home program details.
Here is the part that matters. My Aged Care states that you cannot access CHSP or Support at Home while you are still receiving NDIS services. Taking Support at Home up permanently is a choice between systems rather than a top-up.
A move from the NDIS to Support at Home changes who funds continence supply, and Support at Home can cover the products themselves. Where you are approved for nursing on your Notice of Decision and support plan, single-use continence aids can be bought through the nursing care consumables service. Reusable and washable continence products can be accessed through assistive technology and home modifications.
If you transferred across from a Home Care Package and have not been reassessed under Support at Home, you can access any service on the Support at Home service list, including continence aids. Confirm what your own Notice of Decision approves before you plan around it.
For disposable products, check first whether your state or territory runs a continence aids scheme, because these schemes differ in program design, funding availability and eligibility. The Support at Home program manual says a state-based scheme that can meet a participant's needs should be used in favour of funds from their Support at Home budget, where the participant is eligible for that scheme. If the scheme cannot meet the need, Support at Home or assistive technology and home modifications funding may be used. My Aged Care or the National Continence Helpline can tell you whether your state or territory runs one.
CAPS may also apply on top if you meet its criteria. As at September 2026, Services Australia states that customers can get both CAPS and Support at Home at the same time if they meet the CAPS eligibility criteria, and the Support at Home program manual says a participant who meets all the CAPS eligibility requirements may be eligible to receive CAPS. Confirm it with Services Australia at the time rather than relying on this page.
CAPS is a yearly payment from Services Australia. You can take it as one annual payment or as two instalments a year, and the rate is indexed annually. It is not a retrospective scheme, so it does not pay you back for purchases you have already made, and a first payment is worked out pro-rata from the date Services Australia receives a complete application. Services Australia administers CAPS and their Services Australia CAPS page links through to the current rate, while the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing owns the policy behind it.
CAPS is not automatic either. You need permanent and severe incontinence confirmed by a registered health professional, an eligible condition on the Department's list, and, where the cause is not neurological, a Pensioner Concession Card as well. Residency requirements also apply.
It is closed, among others, to people living permanently in an Australian Government funded aged care home, and to people whose NDIS package already includes continence support.
Aged care contribution arrangements are changing with the reforms, so ask My Aged Care what applies to your circumstances at the time you make the move rather than relying on any figure you read anywhere.
None of this is a decision to make quickly. If Support at Home is being offered and you currently have continence funded through a plan that works, it is worth asking your planner or local area coordinator to walk you through both sides before you accept.
The Commonwealth Home Support Program is not a workaround
CHSP is the entry-level aged care program covering things like domestic assistance, transport and meals, and it has not gone anywhere. It is not a way to add help at home on top of an NDIS plan, though. For a current participant this is a question about switching systems rather than adding to one.
If someone is being offered help at home and you cannot tell from the paperwork which program it sits under, that is a question for the NDIA or your local area coordinator before anything is signed, not after.
The supply continuity checklist
The funding source can change without the product changing. That is the practical goal through any of these transitions, because the worst outcome is a person who has finally found a product that fits being moved onto something else in the middle of an already unsettling month.
Six things are worth doing before the change, not after.
- Confirm the size by measuring, not remembering. Measure the waist with a tape at the point where the product sits, then read that measurement against the size chart for the specific product. The size that fits is not the same number across product types, and the ranges overlap, so do not carry a size across from something else. Our guide on how to measure properly walks through it.
- Write the exact product down. Product name, size, product code and pack size. Codes travel better than descriptions when a new provider or a facility is trying to work out what someone has been using.
- Work out the real daily usage. Count changes over a normal week, day and night separately. Guessed quantities are how people end up short in week three of a new arrangement.
- Hold a buffer. We suggest holding two to three weeks of stock while a new account, a new plan or a new payment cycle is being set up.
- Find out who orders and who pays after the change. These are two different questions and the answer is often two different people. Ask the plan manager, the facility, or the Support at Home provider directly, and write the names down.
- Decide how you will keep the same product. If the new funding route does not stock it, check whether your state or territory runs a continence aids scheme, keep buying it privately, see whether it is available on a subscription so it arrives without anyone remembering to order, or, if you become eligible for CAPS, put that yearly payment towards buying it.
We take calls about funding from people who have not been refused anything. They qualify for something and cannot work out where to start. If that is where you are, none of it means you have done anything wrong.
Where to get an answer about your own situation
Nobody on the internet can tell you what your plan will do, and that includes us. Three places can.
Your NDIS planner or local area coordinator can confirm what an aged care move would mean for your specific plan, and they can do it before you commit to anything. My Aged Care handles assessment, Support at Home and residential care questions, including contributions. Services Australia administers CAPS, so they are the ones who confirm eligibility, process applications and make the payments.
For anything clinical or product related, the National Continence Helpline on 1800 33 00 66 is free and staffed by continence nurse advisers. It is a genuinely useful call and it is not a sales line.
How we keep supply steady through the change
Comfort First is Australian owned and run, based in East Bendigo, and a registered NDIS provider. That means we can supply through your NDIS plan now, keep supplying the same products privately if your funding source changes, including where you are paying with a CAPS payment, or put you on a subscription so nothing lapses while paperwork catches up. We do not decide anyone's eligibility and we cannot change what a plan funds. What we can do is make sure a funding change never becomes a product change.
If you are heading into one of these transitions, call us in East Bendigo on 03 5443 2239 or email sales@comfortfirst.au and we will map out what supply looks like on the other side. You can also see how we work with participants on our NDIS page, or browse the full Comfort First range. If someone has been in the wrong size for a while, we will sort the swap without forms or fuss.