The Clock Is Ticking on HELF: Why 31 October 2026 Matters for Your Revenue as Well as Your Compliance

Written by Kim Hunt, Provider Pulse

If HELF has been sitting on your “we’ll get to it” list, now is the time you need to move it to the top.

On 31 October 2026, every existing Extra Service and Additional Service Fee agreement in residential aged care will cease to have effect. From 1 November 2026, if your residents haven’t transitioned across to a Higher Everyday Living Fee (HELF) agreement, then those fees will stop.

There are no grace periods and no chance to sort it out later. You simply lose that revenue stream.

Many of the providers we are speaking with have treated this as a compliance job, something for their admin teams to complete and tick off the list. We understand why as the “To Do Lists” are very long. But as it’s a revenue issue, it deserves the same attention you’d give any other change management project that will affect your income.

Let’s Do the Maths

Here’s a simple example. Picture a 100-bed home charging a modest $15 a day in additional or extra service fees. That adds up to:

• $1,500 a day
• Roughly $547,500 a year

Now imagine a third of those residents don’t re-sign under a HELF agreement. Perhaps nobody sat down with them to talk it through the offerings, perhaps they couldn’t see what they were getting for their money, or perhaps the ongoing conversation from admission day never continued. Whatever the reason, that home has lost more than $182,500 a year. Not from funding cuts just from a lack of processes and a deadline the whole sector has known about for close to 12 months.

If you have multiple homes, that figure multiplies quickly, and it soon becomes the kind of number your board will want to hear about.

Why Rushing the Paperwork Carries Its Own Risk

The Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission has already opened investigations into providers over their HELF practices. The concerns centre on fees charged for services that should be standard, services residents won’t use, and services that may have been given free of charge prior to Nov 2025. The Commission has been clear that HELF is there to fund better everyday living for residents, and that it should never be used to prop up margins.

That means the tempting shortcut, of moving residents on current ASF or ESF across at the same price after just a brief chat, comes with risks of its own. Residents and families know more about their rights than ever before, and the regulator is paying close attention. Each HELF agreement needs to be something the resident has chosen with a clear understanding of what it includes, and it needs to be reviewed at least once every 12 months.

So providers have two jobs to do at once: move residents across in a way that respects their rights and meets the rules, and protect the revenue that pays for the additional items residents enjoy. Both matter, and both are achievable with the right approach.

Why Residents Say No, and What You Can Learn From It

When a resident or family decides against a HELF agreement, it’s rarely about the price on its own. In our experience, it usually comes down to one of these:

• They were never clear on what the fee covered
• The service hasn’t felt worth the money for a while
• Nobody has sat down and talked it through with them, so cancelling feels like the safer choice
• They think the fee is going away anyway, because that’s how the deadline sounds

The good news is that every one of these can be fixed. The key is to address them before the resident makes a decision, because it’s much harder to win someone back once they’ve cancelled.

What to Focus On Now

Start with an audit

Find out exactly which of your residents are on legacy Extra Service or Additional Service agreements, what they’re paying, and what they’re receiving in return. If what’s written in the agreement and what happens day to day have drifted apart, fix that first, before you ask anyone to sign something new. Also confirm if there are items that were previously delivered free of charge across your homes, make sure these have not been rolled over into new HELF services that these existing residents are now being charged for.

Show the value, and make it easy to see

Anyone paying for something extra should be able to tell you what it gives them. Whether it’s premium menu choices, additional activities, a private space or extra amenities, it needs to be visible and worth having. A fee that has been billed for years out of habit won’t hold up on its own.

Talk it through in person

A HELF agreement that just arrives as a form to sign will get fewer signatures than one that follows a proper conversation with the resident and their family about what matters to them and what it costs. Having that conversation clearly early on in the customer journey and offering a value proposition of how the resident will benefit and enjoy the services, will leave families feeling confident and convinced the right decision is being made.

Leave room for the 28-day cooling-off period

Residents can vary or cancel their agreement within 28 days of signing without paying a cancellation fee. If your first conversations don’t happen until late October, you won’t have time to recover if something goes wrong.

Think of it as a retention project

The providers who come out of 1 November in the strongest position with embedded processes and policies in place, will be the ones who used these final weeks to show residents why the fee is worth paying.

Where to From Here

The 31 October 2026 is a turning point for every dollar of legacy additional and extra service revenue. Each agreement will either move across to a well-explained, compliant HELF agreement, or it will end.

For a 100-bed home charging $15 a day, that’s roughly $547,500 a year at stake, and for groups with several homes the figure grows quickly.

The weeks ahead are a great opportunity to sit down with your residents and families, listen to what they value, and show them what their HELF fees delivers. Providers who take that approach will protect their revenue and build stronger relationships along the way.

If you feel you need support getting your HELF Services, processes and team ready for these conversations, Provider Pulse would love to help.