Report on Government Services 2026
PART F: RELEASED ON 29 JANUARY 2026
F Community services
Data downloads
These data tables relate to the sector as a whole. Data specific to individual service areas is in the data tables under the relevant service area.
Community services data tables (Excel - 48.9 KB)
Community services dataset (CSV - 68.7 KB)Refer to the sector overview text and corresponding table number in the data tables for detailed definitions, caveats, footnotes and data source(s).
Note: Data tables are referenced by table xA.1, xA.2, etc., with x referring to the section or overview. For example, table FA.1 refers to data table 1 for this sector overview.
Community services – sector overview and sections (PDF - 10.4 MB)Main aims of services within the sector
Community services provide support and assistance to individuals, families and groups to maximise their potential and enhance community wellbeing.
In the context of government service delivery, 'community services' include services providing assistance to specific groups with an identified need for additional support. This may include children and young people, families, older people and people with disability. Community services can overlap with other sectors, including health, education, housing and homelessness and early childhood services.
Aged care services
Government-funded care and support services for older people and their carers, which are provided at home, in the community and in residential care facilities.
- Total government recurrent expenditure on aged care services was $39.8 billion in 2024-25.
- The Australian Government provided 98.9% of government funding for aged care services in 2024-25. State and territory governments provided the remainder.
Services for people with disability
Government-funded assistance for people with disability and their carers, with a focus on the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), and social and economic outcomes for people with disability.
- Total government recurrent expenditure on disability services was $51.1 billion in 2024-25, an increase of 5.5% compared to 2023-24.
- In 2024-25, governments contributed $46.1 billion to the NDIS, with a further $1.9 billion in government expenditure on direct service delivery outside of the NDIS.
- The ABS estimates that 5.5 million Australians, or 21.4% of the population, had a disability in 2022 (ABS 2024).
Total expenditure does not represent all expenditure on services for people with disability. People with disability may access non-disability specific services.
Child protection services
Government-funded services to promote family wellbeing and support children and young people who are at risk of abuse and neglect, or whose families do not have the capacity to provide care and protection.
- Total government recurrent expenditure on child protection services was around $11.3 billion nationally in 2024-25, a real increase of 4.1% from 2023-24.
- In 2024-25, real recurrent expenditure on all child protection services per child aged 0–17 years in the population was $1,943 nationally. The cost per child is derived based on the population of children aged 0–17 years in Australia.
Youth justice services
Services provided by statutory youth justice agencies for the supervision and case management of young people who have committed or allegedly committed an offence.
- Total recurrent expenditure on detention-based supervision, community-based supervision and group conferencing was $1.7 billion nationally in 2024-25.
- The average daily number of young people under youth justice supervision in Australia (excluding the Northern Territory) in 2024-25 was 3,177.
Total government expenditure
Detailed information on the equity, effectiveness and efficiency of service provision and the achievement of outcomes for the aged care, services for people with disability, child protection and youth justice service areas is included in the service-specific sections.
Government expenditure in the sector
Total government expenditure for the community services in this report was around $103.9 billion in 2024-25, a real increase of 75.1% over the past six years, primarily due to increases in expenditure on the NDIS. For the 2023-24 financial year (the most recent financial year for which data are available across all sections), the community services sector represented around 23.1% of total government expenditure covered in this report.
Government support payments for the sector
The Australian Government provides support payments to help with living expenses and provide financial assistance to individuals, families, carers and people with disability.
The Age Pension provides income support to older Australians who need it. The Age Pension is paid to people who meet age and residency requirements, subject to a means test. In 2024-25, $62.2 billion was paid to 2.7 million Age Pension recipients, an increase from 2.5 million recipients in 2016 (table F.1; table FA.1).
The Disability Support Pension is a means-tested income support payment for people aged 16 years or over who have a physical, intellectual or psychiatric impairment and who meet certain eligibility criteria. In 2024-25, $23.1 billion was paid to 830,900 Disability Support Pension recipients (table F.1), an increase from 782,900 in 2016 (table FA.1).
Carer payments for child protection services
Authorised carers who care for children in out-of-home care receive an allowance from their state or territory government. This allowance is intended to help cover the costs of caring for a child. The types and amounts of carer payments vary across states and territories (New South Wales Department of Communities and Justice 2025; Victoria Department of Families, Fairness and Housing 2025; Queensland Government 2025; South Australia Department of Child Protection 2025).
Flows in the sector
The community services sector is diverse. Some services are funded and provided by governments, while others are government-funded but delivered by not-for-profit or private providers (for example, private residential aged care services, private providers under the NDIS and child protection prevention and family strengthening services delivered by not-for-profit organisations). Governments also partner with community organisations to provide diversion and early intervention programs to young people across Australia.
Governments regulate the quality and safety of services across the sector. This includes oversight bodies such as the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission, the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission and various state and territory entities. Selected information on complaints, service quality and safety is available in sections 14 and 15. The Productivity Commission inquiry 'Delivering quality care more efficiently' examines reforming quality and safety regulation to support a more cohesive care economy (Productivity Commission 2025).
The sector provides support to specific population groups, including children and young people, families, older people and people with disability. Understanding the characteristics of people accessing community services and their pathways through the service system, including interactions with other services such as health and housing, enables governments to plan and provide services. Linked (integrated) datasets, such as the National Disability Data Asset, which combine information from multiple sources, can support this analysis (Information Box 1).
Information box 1: The potential of linked data to support cross-sectoral analysis
Disability flags in the National Disability Data Asset (NDDA)
In consultation with the disability community and disability data experts, indicators of disability, known as disability flags, have been developed for the NDDA. Disability flags support the consistent inclusion and description of cohorts of people with disability in analyses of deidentified administrative data. The first-generation flag includes people who participated in the NDIS, as well as people who were eligible for, or received, certain disability-related government payments and services.
Disability flags do not represent all people with disability in Australia. Some people with disability may not access services or may access services that are not disability-specific. Disability flags do not measure a broad or unified conceptual definition of disability. More data from Commonwealth, state and territory governments will enable further cross-sectoral service use and service need analysis in future.
Using data from 2022, the first-generation disability flag showed that 1.4 million people, or 5.4% of the population, had received disability-related government payments and services in that year. The proportion of people who received disability-related government payments and services by age, sex, and remoteness area is available in the NDDA factsheet: https://www.ndda.gov.au/measuring-disability-factsheet.
How disability flags can support analysis
Linked data and disability flags can support analysis and service provision by:
- identifying the potential population of people with disability, by region
- improving understanding of existing service use by people with disability
- estimating unmet need for services and forecasting service needs, by region.
There are other linked data sets available or under development, including:
- The National Aged Care Data Asset for aged care research: https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports-data/nacda
- The Child Wellbeing Data Asset: https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports-data/child-wellbeing-data-asset.
The community services workforce
Estimating the size of the community services workforce is challenging due to overlapping occupations and industries (for example, health and welfare support in education and childcare settings).
According to the 2021 Census, of the 12 million people aged 15 years or over who were employed, around 11.5% worked in the occupation ‘community and personal service worker’, up from 10.8% in the 2016 Census (ABS 2022). The occupation group includes:
- ‘personal carers and assistants‘, such as ageing and disability support workers and child or youth residential care assistants
- ‘welfare support workers‘, such as youth workers and family support workers.
In 2021, 3.0% of employed people worked as aged care and disability support workers, up from 1.2% in 2016. The proportion of welfare support workers increased from 0.5% in 2016 to 0.9% in 2021 (ABS 2022).
Information about carers enables governments to plan for future service demand for carer support and assistance to the people for whom they care.
The role of carers for people with disability or older people
Carers play a vital role in supporting older people and people with disability to remain in their homes and communities. According to the 2022 ABS Survey of Disability, Ageing and Carers (ABS 2024; ABS 2019):
- Nationally in 2022, there were 3.0 million carers, representing 11.9% of all Australians living in households, up from 2.6 million carers (10.8% of all Australians living in households) in 2018.
- Around 1.2 million people (4.5% of the Australian population aged 15 years or over) were primary carers of people with disability or older people, providing support in one or more core activities of self-care, mobility and communication.
- Two-thirds (67.7%) of primary carers were female, decreasing from 71.8% in 2018.
Section 14 of this report includes further information on carers of people aged 65 years or over and Section 15 of this report includes further information on carers of people with disability aged under 65 years.
The role of carers in child protection services
Carers, often referred to as relative/kinship carers or foster carers, play a crucial role in providing home-based care for children in the child protection system. Nationally at 30 June 2024, there were 16,009 relative/kinship carer households and 7,980 foster carer households. Section 16 of this report includes further information on kinship carer households and foster carer households.
Carers’ wellbeing
Nationally in 2024-25, 68.1% of carers of people with disability aged 0–64 years reported low levels of wellbeing on the Personal Wellbeing Index compared to carers of children and youth (61.1%), carers of people aged 65 years or over (54.6%) and the general population (33.6%) (figure F.1)
Carers of people with disability also reported less favourable outcomes than other carer groups and the general population in relation to loneliness and self-assessed health (table FA.3).
A summary of the aged care services, services for people with disability, child protection services and youth justice services performance indicator results are presented. Detailed information is in the service-specific sections.
Compliance with care minutes varied across Australia in 2024-25.
Nationally in 2024-25:
- 45.9% of residential aged care services met both the total care minutes target and the registered nurse (RN) care minutes target, an increase from 34.0% in 2023-24 (separately, 55.8% of residential aged care services met the total care minutes target and 70.2% met the RN care minutes target)
- 93.5% of residential aged care services met the 24/7 RN requirement to have an RN on-site and on-duty 24 hours a day, seven days a week, an increase from 89.3% in 2023-24.
Serious incident notifications and complaints regarding residential aged care increased in 2024-25.
Nationally in 2024-25 there were:
- 58,995 Serious Incident Response Scheme notifications from residential aged care service providers, which equates to 8.0 notifications per 10,000 occupied bed days (continuing year-on-year increases from 5.5 notifications per 10,000 occupied bed days in 2021-22, the first full year of the scheme)
- 6,211 in-scope complaints concerning permanent and respite residential aged care services, equivalent to 0.85 complaints per 10,000 occupied bed days, an increase from 0.76 in 2023-24, although down from a peak of 0.93 in 2021-22.
Unit costs in residential aged care and home care increased in 2024-25, while Transition Care Programme unit costs decreased.
Nationally in 2024-25:
- the average annualised cost per occupied bed day was $120,467, a real increase from $83,091 in 2015-16
- the cost per recipient of a home care package programme was $24,516, a real increase from $19,427 in 2022-23
- the cost per day for the Transition Care Programme was $380, a real decrease from $478 in 2023-24.
More information: section 14 Aged care services
NDIS waiting times for approval of a first plan improved in 2024-25.
Nationally in 2024-25:
- 50% of applicants to the NDIS received a decision on their application or a request for further information within 71 days of submitting an access request, increasing to 117 days at the 90th percentile
- 50% of NDIS participants had their first plan approved within 19 days (increasing to 58 days at the 90th percentile), an improvement on results reported in 2022-23 (27 days at the 50th percentile and 60 days at the 90th percentile).
NDIS participant experiences in admitted hospital care
Nationally in 2024-25:
- it took an average of 2.6 days for the NDIA to contact a NDIS participant after being notified of hospital admission
- it took an average of 19 days to be discharged from the hospital once medically ready for discharge.
Reportable incidents increased in 2024-25.
Nationally in 2024-25:
- there were 45.7 total complaints per 1,000 active NDIS participants, an increase from 21.2 in 2022-23
- there were 46.1 other reportable incidents (excluding unauthorised use of restrictive practices) per 1,000 NDIS participants, an increase from 29.9 other reportable incidents per 1,000 active NDIS participants in 2021-22
- rates of reportable incidents varied across category types from 1.1 per 1,000 NDIS participants for alleged sexual misconduct to 20.1 per 1,000 NDIS participants for alleged abuse and neglect.
Australian Government funding per user of non-government provided employment services declined in 2024-25.
Nationally in 2024-25, the estimated Australian Government contribution was:
- $4,257 per user of services (non-government provided employment services), a real decline from $4,944 in 2019-20
- $4,248 per user of open services (employed or seeking employment in the open labour market)
- $17,202 per user of supported services (employed by the service provider).
More information: section 15 Services for people with disability
The rate of children who were the subject of child protection notifications, finalised investigations and substantiations of likely abuse or neglect varied across jurisdictions.
In 2024-25 (excluding Queensland) there were between:
- 23.1 notifications per 1,000 children and 171.2 notifications per 1,000 children across jurisdictions.
- 5.9 finalised investigations per 1,000 children and 43.1 finalised investigations per 1,000 children across jurisdictions.
- 1.9 substantiations per 1,000 children and 15.6 substantiations per 1,000 children across jurisdictions.
The rate of children in out-of-home care (excluding Queensland) at 30 June 2025 ranged from 6.1 per 1,000 children to 13.1 per 1,000 children across jurisdictions.
For children in out-of-home care at 30 June 2025 (excluding Queensland):
- 90.4% of children were in home-based care (including foster care, relative/kinship care and other care).
- proportions in home-based care were similar for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children (90.7%) and non-Indigenous children (90.2%).
Expenditure for care services for children in out-of-home care and other supported placements varied across jurisdictions.
In 2024-25:
- expenditure for care services (2024-25 dollars) ranged from $100.9 million to $2.0 billion across jurisdictions.
- the unit cost of care for children in out-of-home care and other supported placements (excluding Queensland) varied across jurisdictions, ranging from $318 to $507. Data for New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia excludes other supported placements.
More information: section 16 Child protection services
Between 2014-15 and 2022-23, the 12 month return rates for young people aged 10–16 years released from sentenced supervision fluctuated.
- Nationally (excluding the Northern Territory), 56.7% of young people aged 10–16 years released from sentenced supervision in 2022-23, returned within 12 months.
- The proportion of young people aged 10–16 years released from sentenced supervision in 2022-23, who returned within 12 months, varied from 39.9% to 71.5% across jurisdictions.
The average cost per day, per young person subject to youth justice supervision varied across jurisdictions.
Nationally in 2024-25:
- the average cost per day, per young person subject to detention-based supervision ranged from $2,573 to $7,304 across jurisdictions.
- the average cost per day, per young person subject to community-based supervision (excluding the Northern Territory) ranged from $101 to $601 across jurisdictions.
More information: section 17 Youth justice services
References
ABS (Australian Bureau of Statistics) 2024, Disability, Ageing and Carers, Australia: Summary of Findings, https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/health/disability/disability-ageing-and-carers-australia-summary-findings/latest-release (accessed 3 September 2025).
—— 2022, Occupation (OCCP) by employment (EMFP) and Age (AGE5P) [2016 and 2021 Census TableBuilder] (accessed 18 October 2022).
—— 2019, Disability, Ageing and Carers, Australia: Summary of Findings, https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/health/disability/disability-ageing-and-carers-australia-summary-findings/2018 (accessed 3 September 2025).
Australian Government 2024, Disability Indicators Factsheet, https://www.ndda.gov.au/measuring-disability-factsheet (accessed 14 May 2025).
NSW DCJ (New South Wales Department of Communities and Justice) 2025, Financial assistance for all authorised foster, relative and kinship carers, https://www.nsw.gov.au/community-services/foster-relative-and-kinship-care/caring-for-children-and-young-people/financial-assistance (accessed 18 September 2025).
Productivity Commission 2025, Delivering quality care more efficiently, https://www.pc.gov.au/inquiries-and-research/quality-care/report/ (accessed 19 December 2025).
Queensland Government 2025, Carer allowances, https://www.qld.gov.au/community/caring-child/foster-kinship-care/information-for-carers/money-matters/carer-allowances (accessed 18 September 2025).
SA DCP (South Australia Department of Child Protection) 2025, Carer support payments, https://www.childprotection.sa.gov.au/support-and-guidance/for-family-based-carers/caring-basics/carer-support-payments (accessed 18 September 2025).
Vic DFFH (Victoria Department of Families, Fairness and Housing) 2025, Support for home based carers in Victoria, https://services.dffh.vic.gov.au/support-carers (accessed 18 September 2025).
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