CHSP worker screening: what providers must check

The Commonwealth Home Support Programme (CHSP) funds entry-level home support such as domestic assistance, personal care, meals, social support and minor home maintenance for older Australians. The people delivering those services are Aged Care workers, which means their screening is governed by the same rules as the rest of the Aged Care workforce. Providers sometimes assume that lower-intensity, in-home support carries lighter screening obligations. It does not.

This guide explains what CHSP providers must check, how the obligation works under the Aged Care Act, and what to keep current as CHSP moves toward the Support at Home program.

CHSP workers are covered by Aged Care Act screening

From 1 November 2025, the Aged Care Act 2024 sets a single screening standard across the Aged Care sector, and CHSP-funded services sit inside that standard. Every Aged Care worker and responsible person must hold one of exactly two things:

• A police certificate issued within the last three years that does not record a precluding offence, or
• A current NDIS Worker Screening Clearance, which is valid for five years.

These are the only two options. A worker who holds a valid NDIS Worker Screening Clearance does not also need a police certificate. There is no third pathway.

Who the obligation applies to

The screening requirement reaches further than directly employed staff. It applies to:

• Direct employees delivering CHSP-funded services
• Responsible persons, including managers and people with operational control
• Workers engaged through subcontractors and associated providers
• Workers sourced through labour hire and digital platform arrangements

This is the part CHSP providers most often miss. If you bring in a contractor to deliver social support or a labour-hire personal care worker to cover a shift, the screening obligation still rests with you. You cannot assume the engaging agency has it covered. See subcontractor and labour-hire screening obligations for how to set up evidence flows with third parties.

What providers actually have to do

Holding a valid check is the worker's part. The provider's part is to sight the evidence, decide who is permitted to deliver care, and keep that decision current as checks expire. In practice that means:

• Confirming each worker holds a police certificate under three years old or a current NDIS Worker Screening Clearance before they start
• Recording the check type, issue date and expiry so you can see at a glance when something lapses
• Re-checking before the three-year police certificate window closes, since an expired certificate no longer satisfies the requirement
• Capturing screening for every contractor and labour-hire worker, not just permanent staff
• Keeping the records in a form you can produce on request, reflecting status at the time the record is run

Police certificates and NDIS Worker Screening Clearances are reviewed records rather than checks Koora verifies against a live authoritative source. NDIS clearance verification is on the Koora roadmap. The practical risk with a three-year police certificate is quiet expiry: the document was valid on the day someone filed it, but nobody flagged the date it tipped over. A spreadsheet rarely tells you that in time.

CHSP is transitioning to Support at Home

CHSP is not standing still. The program has been extended to 30 June 2027, and the Support at Home program is scheduled to replace it no earlier than 1 July 2027. Many providers will continue to run CHSP-funded services right up to that transition.

The screening obligation carries straight across. Support at Home workers face the same requirement: a police certificate under three years old or a current NDIS Worker Screening Clearance. There is no screening holiday during the changeover, and a worker whose certificate lapses mid-transition is no more compliant than one whose certificate lapses today.

For CHSP providers, the smart move is to treat the transition as a deadline to get records clean now, rather than something to sort out later. If you carry workers across into Support at Home with screening already current and dated, you avoid a scramble while you are also adjusting to new program arrangements. The compliance work you do today is the compliance work you will not have to redo in 2027. See Support at Home worker compliance for what changes and what stays the same.

Common pitfalls for CHSP providers

• Treating social support or domestic assistance as exempt because it is not personal care. It is not exempt; all CHSP workers need screening.
• Relying on AHPRA registration for clinical staff and skipping the screening check.
• Assuming an agency or subcontractor has screened a worker without sighting the evidence yourself.
• Letting a three-year police certificate expire without a renewal prompt.
• Storing screening dates in a spreadsheet that cannot warn you before a check lapses.

Authoritative sources

• Screening requirements for the Aged Care workforce (Department of Health, Disability and Ageing)
• NDIS Worker Screening Check (NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission)
• New ways of working in Aged Care (future screening model)
• Support at Home program (Department of Health, Disability and Ageing)

How Koora helps

Koora gives each worker a portable, reviewed Career Passport and gives providers expiry tracking and a current-state view of compliance. For CHSP teams that means a single place to see whether each worker holds a current police certificate or NDIS Worker Screening Clearance, with the expiry dates visible and ahead of you rather than buried in a folder. When a three-year certificate is about to lapse, you see it before it becomes a gap.

Koora pre-clears credentials so the evidence is organised and dated. The legal obligation to sight that evidence and decide who can deliver care stays with you as the provider. Koora makes that decision quicker and better informed, not optional. Compliance status reflects the moment a report runs, so what you see is the current state of your workforce. As CHSP moves to Support at Home, the same passports and the same monitoring carry across, which is one less thing to rebuild during the transition.

Koora integrates with your existing tools via API and webhooks, and can build a direct integration on request where it saves your team double entry.