How to prepare for your aged care assessment
The assessment is the single most consequential conversation in the whole system: its outcome sets your classification, and your classification sets your budget. Yet most people walk into it unprepared — and many walk in determined to seem fine. This guide is about one thing: making sure the file the assessor writes matches your real life. Not exaggeration — the full truth. Under-describing your needs is among the most common reasons people receive less support than they actually need.
How the assessment actually works
Assessors use the government’s Integrated Assessment Tool (IAT) — a structured questionnaire covering your function (daily activities like showering, dressing, cooking, mobility), health conditions, cognition (memory, recalling conversations), psychological wellbeing (mood, anxiety, loneliness) and social connection. Two mechanics matter enormously for how you prepare. First, the tool uses nested and threshold questions: deeper questioning is only triggered where a concern is raised. A worry you keep private never triggers its questions — which means, in a very real sense, a need that goes unmentioned goes unscored. Second, the funding outcome is produced by a classification process working from the assessment data — so the record of the conversation, not the conversation itself, is what your funding is built on. The file is everything. Feed the file.
The worst-day list
Older people are often at their absolute best on assessment day — pride, fear of losing independence, not wanting to be a bother. The assessor sees a snapshot; the snapshot smiles. The single most effective preparation is a one-page worst-day list: what you cannot do on your hardest days — walking, showering, dressing, cooking, shopping, stairs, driving — written plainly, handed to the assessor or read aloud. It puts the truth into the file without anyone having to perform their hardest moments on cue. Carers describe assessors welcoming exactly this kind of document, along with a short carer impact statement — dot points on what caring costs you physically, mentally and socially without formal supports — and a quiet word with the assessor away from a proud parent when the full picture is hard to say in front of them.
The evidence to have ready
- A GP letter listing every diagnosis — including memory, mood, frailty and pain, not just the headline conditions. Health conditions factor into the assessment; conditions never documented cannot be counted.
- Your medication list — or simply bring the Webster pack.
- A falls and hospital diary — every fall, near-miss and hospital or emergency visit in the last 12 months, with dates. Falls are among the strongest signals of need, and dated lists get recorded where vague memories get lost.
- What family and friends do for you — said out loud. Unpaid help is still unmet need in the system’s terms: if your daughter does the shopping and a neighbour drives you to appointments, the assessment should know, because that is support you need which no service is providing.
Your rights in the room
You are entitled to have a support person present — family, friend or advocate — who can prompt what you forget and say plainly what pride will not. If you have no one, OPAN’s free advocates (1800 700 600) can support you through assessment. And the assessment should be conducted so you can understand and participate — interpreters and adjustments are part of the system, not favours.
If the outcome does not match reality
An assessment outcome is not final-forever — two separate doors exist, and they take different keys. If the decision was wrong on the facts as they stood, you can request an internal review — within 28 days of your Notice of Decision, using the official Request for an Internal Review of a Decision form on the My Aged Care website (or a letter setting out your reasons). The Aged Care Act sets the ground rules (sections 559 to 566): the request must be in writing and give your reasons; if 28 days is not enough you can ask for more time; you should get written acknowledgement within 14 days; the decision must be looked at again by someone who was not involved in the original decision; and they have 90 days to do it. If you hear nothing by then, the law treats the original decision as confirmed — and at that point, or if the review goes against you, you can take it to the Administrative Review Tribunal. So put the date you sent the request in your diary. The key for this door is evidence of what was already true at assessment — a GP letter documenting the conditions and limitations that existed but never made it into the file. And separately, whenever circumstances genuinely change — new diagnoses, falls, hospital stays, faster decline — you can request a reassessment, which produces a fresh decision built on the new facts. The key for that door is documented deterioration: dated, in writing, backed by your GP. Right door, right evidence, in writing — and the escalation ladder maps the full route if you hit resistance.
One thing to know about where things stand in October 2026. At present the assessor cannot override the classification the tool produces, which is why what goes into the file matters so much. A bill that would add a way for an assessor to ask for a human review of the tool’s result passed the House of Representatives on 17 September 2026, but it has not passed the Senate and is not law. If it does pass, the new pathway is due to start in January 2027. Until then, the two doors above are the ones that exist.
Take the one-page version with you. A free, print-friendly prep sheet — big type, the checklist, the key numbers — made to print and hand to anyone, no email or sign-up required.
Download the prep sheet (PDF)Related: approved — what to do next · what Support at Home costs · hardship help