Approved for CHSP — but nobody will take your referral
You were assessed. You were approved. You were given referral codes for each service — domestic assistance, personal care, transport. And then every provider you ring says the same thing: we have no capacity. Families describe this as being handed a key that opens nothing. The sector has a name for it too: empty codes. It is not your fault, it is not a mistake in your paperwork, and understanding why it happens tells you exactly which levers work.
Why it happens: CHSP money doesn’t follow you
This is the piece almost nobody explains, and everything else follows from it. CHSP is block funded. The government gives each provider a grant — a fixed amount, to deliver a set quantity of specific services in a specific region, over a set period. The money belongs to the provider’s grant agreement, not to you.
That is the opposite of Support at Home, where a budget is attached to the person and travels with them. Under CHSP, your referral code confirms eligibility — it does not carry funding. So when a provider says no, they usually aren’t being difficult: the allocation they can bill against for that service, in that area, is committed. And there are currently no growth funding rounds open, so a provider cannot simply ask for more.
Three consequences worth knowing:
- Providers are funded service by service. One might hold transport funding but not personal care. “We can do your shopping but not your showers” sounds arbitrary and isn’t — it reflects what their grant covers.
- Geography is fixed in the agreement. A provider funded for the next region across cannot simply extend to yours.
- Demand has risen sharply. With Support at Home waits long, CHSP has become the bridge people use while waiting — on a program whose grants were set in advance.
The rule most families are never told
Here is the one that changes conversations. Departmental guidance to providers is explicit: they must either accept or reject referrals through the My Aged Care portal, and should only accept referrals where they have capacity to deliver within a reasonable timeframe. And more pointedly — providers must not accept clients onto waitlists where services are not imminently available, because doing so can stop other local providers with capacity from picking the person up.
Read that again if you are currently sitting on a waitlist. A long parking-lot waitlist isn’t just unhelpful — it can be actively blocking you, because the system may show you as placed. If you have been waiting months with no service, the question to ask is direct: “Are my services imminently available? If not, please reject the referral so it can go to a provider with capacity.” That sounds counterintuitive — asking to be rejected — but a rejected referral is a free code, and a code sitting in a queue is a code doing nothing.
The four levers that actually work
- Ask My Aged Care to issue referrals to more providers. Call 1800 200 422. Your assessor may have sent your referral to one or two providers; more can be issued, including to travel-in providers with no local shopfront that a postcode search never surfaces. Ask specifically: “Which providers are funded for this service in my area, and can referrals go to all of them?”
- Ask about each service separately. Don’t ask “do you have capacity” — ask which of your approved services they are funded for and have room in. Getting transport and social support while personal care waits is better than getting nothing, and it puts you in the system with that provider.
- Have it recorded as unmet need in your region. This is the lever with the longest reach. Block funding is allocated against recorded demand, and the department runs specific grant categories for service shortages. Silent need is invisible need — ask My Aged Care to record that no provider had capacity.
- Get an advocate to push. OPAN’s free independent advocates (1800 700 600) chase stuck referrals with My Aged Care on your behalf. If the phone loop is wearing you down, this is the call that hands it to someone else.
If your needs have grown while you wait
CHSP is entry-level support. If you are waiting because the services you need have outgrown what’s available — or if things have changed since your assessment — ask for a reassessment. A higher level of assessed need moves you into the Support at Home pathway, which works differently: there, the budget is attached to you. That has its own wait, but it is a different queue with different rules, and how you prepare for that assessment matters enormously.
And if a hospital admission, a fall, or a carer reaching their limit is part of the picture, say so plainly — urgency is assessed, and hospital discharge planners can trigger faster processes.
What this is not
It is not a judgement about you, and it is usually not a provider being unkind. It is a funding model meeting demand it was not sized for — and on that front, there is genuine news. On 20 August 2026 the government announced that the long-planned merger of CHSP into Support at Home will not proceed: the Aged Care Minister stated that CHSP “should remain a standalone program”, funding is extended to at least 30 June 2029, and consultation is now about making the separation permanent. That matters for stranded referrals specifically, because the government acknowledged that providers had been withdrawing from CHSP due to uncertainty about its future — and said that reason no longer exists. Providers who left now have certainty to return, which is the most hopeful thing to happen to local capacity in some time. Until it flows through, the levers above are what move things: more referrals, service by service, unmet need recorded, and an advocate in your corner.
Approved for Support at Home instead, or weighing up the switch? The estimator compares both worlds side by side with your own numbers.
Compare the costsRelated: assessed for Support at Home but no provider will take you · preparing for your assessment · the escalation ladder