Who Pays for Incontinence Products in Aged Care?
By Kim Hando
, Owner & Founder
│ 02 September 2026
Last reviewed: 01 September 2026
Share
Last reviewed: 1 September 2026
The call comes once Mum has moved into the aged care home. The standing order is still running, a fresh carton has just landed on the porch of a house nobody is living in, and someone in the family has finally said it out loud: are we meant to still be buying these?
Almost always, no. And the reason is the single most useful thing to understand about who pays for incontinence products in aged care: responsibility changes completely depending on where the person lives. Our complete guide to NDIS continence funding covers the schemes themselves in detail. This article answers the narrower question underneath them, which is who is actually responsible for the products.
Aged care incontinence products: who pays?
At home, continence products are self-funded by default, with several assistance schemes you may qualify for. In a permanent residential aged care home, the provider must supply continence products to meet each resident's assessed needs under the Aged Care Act 2024. Residents are not charged separately for the products their assessed needs require, though some residents pay a means-tested contribution towards non-clinical care, the category continence care sits in.
Put simply, who pays for continence products in aged care flips at the front door of a residential home. Up to that point, continence products are a household expense with help available if you qualify for it. From the day someone becomes a permanent resident, supplying those products is part of the care the home is both funded and obliged to deliver.
Two things families get wrong
The first is the carton that keeps arriving. We hear from families who bought pads for a parent for years and carried the habit straight into residential care. It is money spent on something already paid for, at a point when nobody in the family has the head space to check.
The second is the assumption that the government pays for pads the same way wherever you live. It doesn't. At home, the government may help you buy them through a scheme you have to apply for and be found eligible for. In residential care, the government pays the provider to supply them, and you never see that transaction at all.
Same product, completely different mechanism.
At home, the funding is a patchwork
The baseline at home is that you buy your own. Sitting on top of that baseline are several assistance pathways, each with its own eligibility test, and you may qualify for one of them.
- The Continence Aids Payment Scheme (CAPS), run by Services Australia, is an annual payment towards continence products. The criteria include being 5 or older, permanent and severe incontinence confirmed by a registered health professional, Australian citizenship or permanent residency or permanent residency rights for as long as you get the payment, and an eligible neurological condition or another condition listed by the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing, with a Pensioner Concession Card also required where the cause is non-neurological. Services Australia states that you can get both CAPS and Support at Home at the same time if you meet the CAPS eligibility criteria, but you cannot be paid under CAPS if you get Australian Government funded home care under a plan that already included continence aids support before 1 November 2025. Our complete CAPS guide and the step by step guide to applying carry the detail.
- The NDIS, for participants whose plan funds continence consumables. Check what your own plan covers with your plan manager or the NDIS. Our NDIS page explains how ordering works with us as a registered provider.
- Support at Home, the aged care program that replaced Home Care Packages. The Support at Home program manual says single use continence aids can be bought through the service called nursing care consumables where the participant is eligible for nursing, as set out on their Notice of Decision and support plan. It also says transitioned Home Care Package recipients who have not been reassessed under Support at Home can access any service on the Support at Home service list, continence aids included. A state or territory continence scheme that can meet the need should be used ahead of Support at Home funding, where the person is eligible for that scheme.
- The Department of Veterans' Affairs, through the Rehabilitation Appliances Program, for eligible Veteran Card holders living independently at home. Check with DVA.
- State and territory schemes. Some states and territories fund continence products for people living in the community who have a permanent or long-term disability, each under its own name and its own rules. Continence Health Australia lists schemes in the Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales, the Northern Territory, Queensland, Victoria and Western Australia. A jurisdiction that list leaves out may still run a scheme of its own: Tasmania's Continence Aids Scheme is listed separately by the Tasmanian Department of Health, with a Continence Nurse Advisor on 1300 134 106. Our guide to state and territory continence schemes maps them jurisdiction by jurisdiction. Check whether your own state or territory has one, and call the National Continence Helpline on 1800 33 00 66 if you are not sure where to start.
How you actually claim any of this is a separate question, and one we have already answered properly. What you can claim, scheme by scheme walks through the mechanics, and CAPS or NDIS, which one applies sorts out the choice most people end up having to make between the two.
In a residential aged care home, the provider supplies the products
Once someone becomes a permanent resident, continence products stop being a shopping decision and become part of their care. Registered providers must deliver the care, services and equipment set out in the Residential Care Service List, under the Aged Care Act 2024 and the Aged Care Rules 2025.
Continence care sits in the non-clinical care category of that list. The Department of Health, Disability and Ageing describes it as supplying, and assisting with, as many products as are needed to maintain hygiene and dignity and to meet care needs.
It is not a fixed daily ration. It is however many products the resident's assessed needs call for.
Anyone who worked in aged care before the new Act will know the predecessor obligation from the former Quality of Care Principles, and documents still in circulation reference those Principles.
None of this comes out of a resident's pocket item by item. The Australian Government pays providers a daily subsidy for each permanent resident under the Australian National Aged Care Classification model, and residents also pay a basic daily fee towards everyday living costs. Under the fee arrangements that started on 1 November 2025, some residents also pay a means-tested non-clinical care contribution towards costs such as bathing, mobility assistance and lifestyle activities. Which means tested fees apply depends on which fee arrangements a resident is on, and Services Australia sends a fee advice letter setting out which ones apply and the amounts they must pay.
Continence products assessed as necessary are covered inside those arrangements. So no, you do not pay for incontinence pads in a nursing home as a separate line on the bill.
The household schemes stop at the same door. Services Australia lists residing permanently in an Australian Government funded aged care facility as one of several reasons a person cannot be paid under CAPS, alongside holding a DVA Veteran Card (All Conditions) or Veteran Card (Specific Conditions) with access to the Rehabilitation Appliances Program, and holding an NDIS package that includes continence support. Once the aged care home picks up the obligation, the household scheme steps back.
The guidance manual for the service list splits products three ways, and the split decides who pays. Standard products are the fit-for-purpose stock suitable for the general resident population. Non-standard products are the ones a qualified health professional assesses as necessary to meet an individual resident's specific needs. Both are funded items, and the manual states plainly that providers cannot charge for the cost of them.
Advanced products sit outside that. In the Residential Care Service List manual, those are items that significantly differ from what a health professional recommended, with extra features that are not essential to meet the assessed care needs, and the manual notes they may be requested out of personal preference rather than a health need. A provider is not obliged to fund those and can charge extra for them, including through a higher everyday living fee agreement, which cannot be agreed before the person has entered care. Whether a home will use products a family supplies is worth asking that home directly.
Families sometimes feel the products are being rationed, and that is worth naming plainly rather than sitting on. A fixed nightly allocation is not the same thing as supplying as many products as a resident's assessed needs require, and if someone is being changed on a schedule that suits the roster rather than the person, that is a care plan conversation first. If it does not resolve there, the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission takes complaints from residents, families and representatives, and you can raise a concern with or without sharing your name.
Product choice is worth raising early, and the hook is the provider's own obligation rather than a right you hold over the product itself. A product that leaks, or that leaves skin irritated, is a fair question about whether the resident's assessed care need is actually being met.
One gap between what a home orders and what a resident needs is size range. A resident in a pull-up that gaps at the leg is a fair thing to raise at a care plan meeting. The provider side of all this, including how homes assess and procure, is covered in our guide for Australian aged care providers. What the strengthened Aged Care Quality Standards actually ask of a home on continence, and the records an assessor looks for, is set out in our guide to Action 5.5.3 and continence care.
DVA continence products in aged care: the exception that catches people out
This is the one that trips up veterans and their families. Eligible veterans and war widows and widowers who are permanent residents of a residential aged care facility are generally not supplied continence products through the Rehabilitation Appliances Program, because the facility is responsible for providing them.
DVA's own position is that where a residential aged care facility is funded to provide an aid or appliance, it is expected to do so, and DVA does not seek to duplicate those arrangements. The facility's funding is assessed to cover standard and non-standard off-the-shelf products for the residents it cares for.
Access is conditional rather than closed. DVA will fund customised products for eligible veterans and war widows and widowers living in a facility. On DVA's own list, a customised product includes a custom-made product assessed or prescribed by a health provider to meet an individual resident's specific care needs, an advanced model with extra features needed to meet assessed care needs where a lower specification standard or non-standard model is also available, and a product prescribed by a suitable health provider to meet a clinical need beyond the scope of what the facility is funded to provide.
That is a different use of the word from the Residential Care Service List manual. On DVA's list an advanced model has extra features needed to meet assessed care needs, where the manual's advanced products have extra features that are not essential to meet them.
Where a home is not funded to provide the personalisation or customisation a resident clinically needs, the prescribing health provider submits a request to DVA for prior approval with clinical justification, and DVA considers it case by case. DVA publishes a RAP in Residential Aged Care List showing which items may still be provided to residents.
The order of operations is the practical part. Speak to the aged care home first and check whether they are responsible for supplying that particular product. If they are not, contact DVA on 1800 838 372 to check eligibility.
A veteran still living independently at home sits in a different position entirely, and RAP is a live pathway there. Our full guide to DVA continence products covers that side.
What to ask, depending on where you are
At home. Work out which assistance pathway, if any, you qualify for, and check it again once a year. The CAPS rules on holding it alongside Support at Home, and the home care exception, are set out earlier in this article.
A move into residential care. Ask the home what continence products are included in the assessed care plan, what the standard product is, and what happens if it doesn't suit. Ask in writing if you can. Then raise product choice at the care plan meeting rather than after the first leak, and cancel the home delivery once you have the answer.
What to do with the stock you already have. Unopened packs are not wasted. Ask the home directly whether it will use a resident's own products. If they are not going to be used, an unopened carton is worth offering to a carers group or a local service before it goes in the bin. What is not worth doing is leaving a subscription running for months in case somebody needs it.
If a veteran is involved. Speak to the facility first, then DVA.
If you coordinate supports or manage a plan. A participant moving permanently into a residential aged care home is the point to raise continence consumables with the NDIA, because the home takes on the supply obligation for assessed continence needs from the day the person becomes a permanent resident. What that means for the plan itself is a question for the NDIA and the participant's plan manager rather than for a supplier, and what changes for an NDIS plan at 65 covers the wider interface.
For a short stay rather than a move. Respite splits two ways. The Department's guidance manual for the Residential Care Service List says a residential respite resident who is participating in CAPS should bring adequate supplies of continence products with them when the respite episode starts. For a respite resident who is not on CAPS, the provider remains responsible for providing all necessary continence aids and products during that episode. We have covered the packing side of short-term and respite stays separately.
Where that leaves you if you are still buying at home
If you are still at the at-home stage, self-funding some or all of it, that is where the cost is genuinely yours. Getting the product right matters more there than anywhere else, because the wrong size is a leak, a wash, and another pack bought a week early. That is the reason we send new customers a free sample pack: fit and feel are things you have to test, not read about.
Our full range is set up for ongoing supply rather than a one-off purchase, and a subscription plan keeps supply arriving without anyone in the family having to remember to reorder.
If your parent is already a permanent resident, the buying decision is not yours any more, but the fit conversation still is.
Either way, if you would rather talk it through with a person, call 03 5443 2239 or email sales@comfortfirst.au. We are Australian owned and run, based in East Bendigo, and a registered NDIS provider.