There is a piece of misinformation that does the rounds in waiting rooms and Facebook groups, and it worries people badly: that the NDIS cuts you off at 65.

It does not.

If you were an NDIS participant before your 65th birthday, you can stay on the NDIS. Your current plan does not end simply because you have turned 65. Turning 65 does not itself require you to change providers or support workers. There is no automatic birthday cutoff. The age limit in the NDIS rules is about applying, not about staying.

What is true is that turning 65 opens up a second system you did not have access to before, and that leaving the NDIS for permanent aged care support is generally irreversible. This guide walks through both systems, what each one actually funds, and what the pathway looks like here in WA if you were never on the NDIS in the first place.

Quick answer: turning 65 does not take you off the NDIS

1. You can stay. If you joined the NDIS before you turned 65, there is no age at which you have to leave. There is no upper age limit on being a participant.
2. You cannot join. You must be under 65 on the day you apply. Once you turn 65, that door is closed and it does not reopen.
3. There are two aged care decisions that can require you to leave the NDIS after 65. Moving permanently into residential aged care for the first time, or starting to receive aged care home support permanently for the first time.
4. Neither happens automatically on your 65th birthday, but either decision can require you to leave the NDIS. Leaving the NDIS for permanent aged care support is generally irreversible.
5. You cannot be funded by both at once. It is the NDIS or the aged care system, not a bit of each.

The rule that matters is about applying, not about staying

The age requirement in the NDIS is simple, and it catches people out for one reason only: it is measured on the day you apply.

You must be under 65 when you make your access request, and the request must be complete and in the required format when the NDIA receives it. Not under 65 when the decision comes back, not under 65 when your first plan starts. Under 65 on the day a complete request lands. The NDIS sets out the full test in its eligibility guidance.

That has a practical consequence worth saying plainly. If you are in your early sixties and you think you might be eligible, do not wait. People put off applying because they feel they are managing, or because the paperwork is daunting, or because a diagnosis is still being worked through. Then the birthday arrives and the option is gone, permanently, no matter how much their needs increase afterwards.

If you are not sure whether you would qualify, our NDIS eligibility criteria and checklist walks through the age, residency and disability tests in plain English. It takes about ten minutes to work out whether it is worth applying, and applying costs you nothing.

If you are close to the line. If your 65th birthday is approaching, contact the NDIS immediately on 1800 800 110 for help completing and submitting the access request on time. The application must be complete, in the required format, and received before you turn 65. The NDIA may request further evidence while it is assessing your request, but an incomplete enquiry may not preserve your eligibility. Start the conversation with your GP or specialist now rather than waiting until the reports are perfect – and ask the NDIS what a complete request needs to contain before you send it.

What actually changes on your 65th birthday

Nothing automatic. That is the honest answer, and it is worth stating clearly because so many people expect otherwise.

• Your plan keeps running to its end date.
• Your funding is not automatically reduced because you turned 65. Future plan funding will continue to be based on the NDIS criteria and your disability-related support needs.
• Your reassessment cycle carries on as normal.
• Turning 65 does not itself require you to change providers or support workers.
• The NDIA does not review you off the scheme because you had a birthday.
• Turning 65 does not change how your funding is handled either, whether it is self-managed, plan-managed or NDIA-managed.

Your supports should still be assessed the way they always were: against what is reasonable and necessary for your disability-related needs. Ageing does not convert a disability support into an aged care support, and the NDIS funding categories your plan is built from do not change shape when you turn 65.

What does change is that a second system is now open to you, and you get to decide whether to use it.

The two aged care decisions that can require you to leave

Participation in the NDIS can end for a range of reasons at any age. What follows is specifically about the two aged care decisions that can require you to leave the scheme after 65. The NDIS sets both out in its guide to leaving the scheme.

1. Moving permanently into residential aged care for the first time after you turn 65. If you make a permanent move into an aged care home after your 65th birthday, you must leave the NDIS. This is a legal requirement rather than a discretionary decision by a planner, and there is no internal review available on that particular point.

2. Starting to receive aged care home support permanently for the first time after you turn 65. Taking up ongoing support through the aged care system, which since November 2025 means the Support at Home program, has the same effect. You cannot hold an NDIS plan and an aged care support budget at the same time.

Two important qualifications sit alongside those rules.

If you were already living in residential aged care before you turned 65, you can stay on the NDIS. The trigger is a first permanent move made after 65. Someone who was already there, and who wants to stay where they are, can continue as a participant and keep using their plan for NDIS supports.

The trigger is a permanent move, not a short stay. Respite is a different thing from permanently entering residential aged care, and using respite support does not end your NDIS participation. That said, the paperwork for a short stay and a permanent admission can look similar from the outside, and how an admission is recorded matters a great deal here. If you are over 65 and considering any stay in an aged care home, confirm with the NDIA on 1800 800 110 how it will be recorded before you sign anything.

Leaving is generally irreversible. Once you leave the NDIS for permanent aged care support you cannot return, even if your circumstances change, and even if your disability needs grow well beyond what aged care funds. This is the single most important thing to understand on this page. Take your time, and get advice before anything is decided.

Staying on the NDIS vs moving to Support at Home

Since 1 November 2025, home-based aged care in Australia runs through the Support at Home program, introduced under the new Aged Care Act. It replaced Home Care Packages and Short-Term Restorative Care. The Commonwealth Home Support Programme, or CHSP, continues alongside it as the entry-level option for people who need a smaller amount of help.

Here is how the two systems compare for someone over 65 who has a genuine choice between them.

What Support at Home costs you. Contributions depend on your income and assets and on the type of service, not just the amount. There are three categories. Clinical supports such as nursing and physiotherapy carry no contribution at all. Independence supports sit in the middle. Everyday living supports such as domestic assistance and gardening carry the highest contribution. A full pensioner, for example, pays nothing toward clinical supports, 5% toward independence supports and 17.5% toward everyday living supports. The full rate table sits in the Department of Health’s means testing guidance.

If you were receiving, or had been approved for, a Home Care Package on or before 12 September 2024, a no worse off guarantee applies to your contribution arrangements.

What is changing from 1 October 2026

From 1 October 2026, personal care moves out of the “independence” category and into “clinical supports” under Support at Home, which means the Australian Government fully funds it. If your support plan approves you for personal care and you have funding available, you will not pay anything out of pocket for it.

Personal care here means help with showering, dressing, eating, personal hygiene, non-clinical continence support and assistance with self-administering medication. For many people this is the largest single line in their budget, so the change is significant.

One catch worth knowing: services delivered before 1 October still attract a contribution, even if the claim is submitted afterwards. It is the delivery date that counts, not the invoice date. The Department of Health has published the detail in its personal care contributions guidance.

The honest comparison. For most people with a significant, lifelong disability, the NDIS funds more, funds a wider range of things, and costs them less out of pocket. Support at Home is designed around age-related need rather than disability, and its ceiling is a good deal lower than a substantial NDIS plan. That is not an argument for staying in every case, but it is the right starting point.

Where aged care can genuinely be the better fit is when someone’s support needs have shifted decisively toward health and personal care, when they want a simpler system with less administration, or when residential care has become the right answer for reasons that have nothing to do with funding.

What changes practically if you do move across

If you decide the aged care system is the right one for you, here is what the transition actually involves.

You will need an aged care assessment. Aged care assessments now run through the Single Assessment System, which replaced the separate assessment workforces in December 2024. A trained assessor uses the Integrated Assessment Tool to look at your health, daily activities, living situation, goals and support needs, then recommends what you are eligible for.

You may wait for a place. Support at Home operates a priority system. Being assessed as eligible for a classification level and actually receiving that budget are two different milestones. There may be a wait between assessment and funding becoming available, depending on priority and availability. Do not give up your NDIS plan on the strength of an assessment outcome alone.

Your services are arranged through a registered aged care provider. That provider may in turn use associated providers or subcontractors to deliver some of your supports. This is the practical detail that catches people out, and it is covered properly in the next section.

Your budget works differently. Support at Home budgets are released quarterly rather than as one plan-length pool. Unspent funds carry over into the next quarter up to the higher of $1,000 or 10% of your quarterly budget, so underspending does not bank up the way NDIS funding can. Around 10% of the budget is allocated to care management. The Department of Health sets out the mechanics in its individualised budgets guidance.

The vocabulary changes. Plan becomes support plan. Plan reassessment becomes reassessment through My Aged Care. Your NDIS planner is replaced by a care manager at your aged care provider. It is a new set of terminology to learn at exactly the point where you would rather things were simple.

If you were never on the NDIS and you are over 65 now

This is a common and genuinely difficult position, particularly for people who acquired a disability later in life, or whose condition was never formally assessed while they were younger.

You cannot apply to the NDIS. There is no exception, no appeal and no hardship provision on age. An access request will be refused on the age requirement alone.

DSOA is not an option either. The Disability Support for Older Australians program supports a specific historical group: people who were receiving state specialist disability services when the NDIS rolled out, were over the age cut-off at the time, and so never transferred across. DSOA does not accept new clients. If you are not already in it, it is not a pathway.

My Aged Care is the pathway. For everyone else over 65, the aged care system is where support comes from, whether the underlying reason is ageing, disability, or both.

Here is how to start in WA:

• Call My Aged Care on 1800 200 422, or apply online. A family member, carer or health professional can apply on your behalf.
• Or book an in-person appointment with an Aged Care Specialist Officer at a Services Australia office by calling 1800 227 475. For people who find phone systems hard work, this is often the easier route.
• Ask for an assessment. The outcome will tell you whether CHSP, Support at Home, or residential care fits your situation.
• Start earlier than feels necessary. Between the assessment and funding becoming available there can be a real wait, so it is worth beginning the process before help becomes urgent.

One thing worth saying to families in this situation: aged care assessments focus on how your health, disability or impairment affects your everyday functioning, rather than relying on a diagnosis alone. Disability-related needs can still be relevant after 65. Describe what you cannot do without help, what happens on typical and difficult days, how often you need assistance, and what happens when it is unavailable.

Continuity of care: the part nobody plans for

The funding conversation gets all the attention. The thing that actually determines whether a transition goes well is much more human than that.

It is whether the person who knows how you take your tea, which shoulder hurts, and how to read your mood before you have said a word, is still turning up on Tuesday.

Support relationships take years to build and about a fortnight to lose. When someone moves between funding systems, that relationship is the thing most likely to break, because the new system works through its own registered providers and your existing one may not be among them. People arrive at a decision about funding and only afterwards realise they have also made a decision about who comes to their house.

So make it an explicit part of the decision, not an afterthought.

Questions worth asking before you decide:

• Is my current provider a registered aged care provider for Support at Home, or only an NDIS provider?
• If not, what would happen to my current support workers if I moved across?
• Can any of my current team follow me, under any arrangement?
• How long would a handover realistically take, and who organises it?
• If I stay on the NDIS instead, does anything about my supports have to change at all?

Where we sit. Innovative Care is an NDIS provider. If you remain on the NDIS, turning 65 does not itself require you to change your Innovative Care supports or team, and your home care and personal support continues as it does now. If you are weighing up a move to the aged care system, talk to us early anyway. We can explain what staying with your current NDIS supports would look like, and we would encourage you to confirm aged care eligibility, funding and transition arrangements with My Aged Care or an independent advocate.

Frequently asked questions

Do I have to leave the NDIS when I turn 65?
No. If you became a participant before your 65th birthday, you can stay on the NDIS with no upper age limit. Turning 65 does not trigger a review, reduce your funding, or change your plan. You only leave if you choose to move permanently into residential aged care, or to start receiving aged care home support, for the first time after 65.

Can I apply for the NDIS if I am already 65?
No. You must be under 65 on the day you make your access request, and there is no exception to that rule. If you are over 65 and need support, My Aged Care on 1800 200 422 is the pathway. If you are in your early sixties, apply now rather than waiting.

Can I receive NDIS funding and a Support at Home budget at the same time?
No. The two systems do not run in parallel. You cannot access Support at Home or the Commonwealth Home Support Programme while you are receiving NDIS supports, and taking up aged care support permanently after 65 ends your NDIS participation.

What happens if I go into respite at an aged care home after 65?
Respite is not the same as permanently entering residential aged care, and using respite does not end your NDIS participation. Because a short stay and a permanent admission can be recorded differently, confirm with the NDIA on 1800 800 110 how any stay will be recorded before you commit to it.

If I move to aged care, can I come back to the NDIS later?
No. Moving across is permanent, even if your needs later grow beyond what the aged care system funds. This is the main reason to take the decision slowly, get independent advice, and make sure the aged care funding is actually in place before you give anything up.

Talk it through with someone who understands the transition

Turning 65 on the NDIS is not a deadline. It is a fork in the road, and there is no rush to take either branch.

If you are approaching 65, or you have passed it and are wondering whether you made the right call, we are happy to talk it through with no obligation. We support people across Perth and the wider WA metropolitan area with home care and personal support under the NDIS. We can explain what staying with your current NDIS supports would look like, and point you to My Aged Care or an independent advocate to confirm aged care eligibility, funding and transition arrangements. We would far rather help someone understand their options early than pick up the pieces of a decision made under pressure.

Talk to our Perth team whenever you are ready.

This guide is general information, not financial or legal advice. Funding rules, contribution rates and program details change – the NDIS on 1800 800 110 and My Aged Care on 1800 200 422 can confirm what applies to your situation.