DVA Attendant Care: Getting Help to Wash, Dress and Eat at Home

Your Body, Not Your Home

The MRCA, a 2004 Act that now governs new attendant care claims, splits support in the home into two separate kinds. Attendant care deals with your body: the hands-on support that keeps you clean, dressed and fed each day.

Cooking, cleaning and yard work belong to a different claim. That claim faces a separate test in the Act, so telling the two apart early avoids lodging the wrong one. If chores are the sticking point, turn to our household services claims page.

Tasks Covered

DVA's policy manual names six kinds of help:

• Moving between positions, such as sitting to standing, if your mobility is limited
• Help to shower or bathe
• Toileting and other hygiene
• Dressing yourself and grooming
• Eating and drinking
• Fitting or using artificial aids, along with other appliances

Where It Stops

Some needs sit outside attendant care, however real they are. The policy excludes:

• Clinical care, including nursing and medical treatment
• Travel, transport and somewhere to stay
• What your meals cost
• Keeping you company
• Watching over behaviour or managing it
• Outings, unless they tie back to personal care
• Household chores
• Help another program already provides

Nursing runs through its own DVA program. Where clinical nursing is required, DVA suggests raising it with your doctor, as explained further down.

Eligibility in Brief

Two basic tests come first, before DVA weighs whether you reasonably need the help. The sections below cover them, then the groups DVA includes and the mid-2026 changes.

Why Liability Matters

The first hurdle is liability: DVA must agree that service is behind the condition, whether it started it or made it worse.

Any need for help must stem from that condition, or from the worsening if service only aggravated it. Needs that come from age or frailty alone point to other programs.

No accepted condition yet? Our initial liability service is built for that first step.

The Home Test

DVA's own summary of attendant care adds a home test. In short, you must be based at home, rather than in hospital, respite or a residential facility.

Serving, Reserve and Cadet Members

Where you satisfy the criteria and an assessment backs the need, DVA's policy extends cover to current members and to former members. Reservists serving part time are included too, as are cadets along with the instructors and officers who run them.

Older Claims and the Mid-2026 Switch

Starting July 1, 2026, each new attendant care claim is assessed by MRCA rules. Neither the Act behind the original acceptance nor your service dates change that.

Conditions that only the older VEA ever accepted can now back a claim, which was not possible before. Some veterans already receive MRCA or DRCA attendant care and also hold conditions the VEA accepted.

They may seek a fresh assessment that takes those VEA conditions into account, as DVA's April 2026 announcement explains.

A DRCA approval carries on until its renewal date, when the review happens under MRCA rules. Anyone on the DRCA maximum whose needs are unchanged may ask to move early, since the MRCA ceiling is a little higher.

What DVA Weighs Before Saying Yes

DVA approves help only once satisfied you reasonably need it. Section 218 of that 2004 Act lists what it must consider, which in plain terms is:

• The condition itself and how it behaves
• The limits your condition places on your self-care
• What doctors or nurses already do for you
• How far the help is needed to keep you out of an institution
• How far you need it to start or keep serving or working
• What any rehabilitation assessment found
• How much unpaid help a relative might fairly give
• Anything else DVA considers relevant

Equipment Counts Too

Equipment also comes into the decision. A shower chair or feeding aid might let you do more for yourself and need fewer hours of help. The doctor's questions on the form cover this.

Such items may come through RAP, DVA's equipment scheme, which our RAP guide explains. RAP needs a clinician to confirm the need and also needs a Veteran Card. How wide the help runs depends on which one:

• Gold Card: Items for any need a clinician confirms
• White Card: Only items tied to conditions the card includes

Being Assessed

Once DVA holds your form, it may arrange for a clinician to check how you cope with daily tasks. DVA's claim investigation guidance treats the clinician's report as evidence in deciding.

Where information is still thin, DVA can seek more from you or from a clinician who treats you. It can also arrange a further independent assessment, for instance by a specialist occupational therapist with mental health expertise.

No rehabilitation program is needed for approval. Even so, a rehab assessment may be what first shows the need.

How Long Approval Lasts

If an accepted injury needs surgery, DVA may approve help for just a short stretch of recovery. Serious harm to the spine or brain, for example, may call for ongoing help.

Each approval names its own period and comes up for review. The form offers periods capped at twelve months, or an ongoing option.

Putting Your Claim Together

Claims run on DVA's form D1351. It has a section you complete and a separate one for your treating doctor.

Prepare First

Over a few days, jot down which daily tasks you cannot finish alone and why. Note how long each takes and who helps you at the moment.

Notes like these mirror the questions DVA asks. They also give your doctor real examples to draw on.

Your Section

Start by listing which accepted conditions drive your claim, then the help being sought. Each task needs its frequency, the hours involved and a likely cost.

Next come questions about publicly funded help in place now, such as the NDIS or VHC, DVA's home care scheme. You are also asked whether a household member or relative could reasonably pitch in.

Two more questions ask whether you need this care in order to work or serve, or to avoid moving into an institution. A later question covers Attendant Allowance, which the answers below explain.

Your Doctor's Section

Your doctor sets out their clinical reasoning about whether the help is reasonably needed. They state if the need stems only from your accepted injuries or partly from other causes.

The doctor then estimates daily or weekly hours for each task. They can suggest aids and estimate how long the care will be required.

DVA asks you both for enough detail to judge the claim. A longer appointment can give the doctor time for each question.

A Last Check Before Lodging

When we are assisting on a claim like this, our last step is reading both sections side by side. You give hours per visit and how often, but your doctor gives a daily or weekly figure, so we convert yours to match. Where the two still differ, we go over it with you first, so the form gives DVA one consistent picture.

Lodging the Form

The email address for completed forms is hhs@dva.gov.au. Paper forms go in the post: GPO Box 9998, Brisbane QLD 4001.

The form also lets you nominate someone to act on this claim for you. MyService offers a way to set that person up.

If the form raises questions, ring DVA's phone line, 1800 838 372. Veterans' Access Network staff offer help in person too.

After Approval

A formal decision records the help approved, its amount and its duration. From there, choosing and managing the provider is your job.

Picking a Provider

Any claim made from 4 May 2026 onward falls under DVA's provider policy, which expects care from an accredited source. That leaves three options:

• An attendant care organisation accredited through ACIA, the industry's national body
• Providers on My Aged Care's register that offer personal care
• A provider registered with the NDIS for personal care

Paying someone in your family, including a partner, is reserved for exceptional circumstances. Examples DVA gives include living somewhere remote, a major language barrier and strong cultural expectations that cannot be set aside.

A senior delegate weighs the evidence and decides each request. Family arrangements come up again at renewal. If current evidence no longer shows an exceptional reason, DVA moves the care across to an outside provider gradually.

Running It Week by Week

You agree to visit times, monitor how good the care is and take up any problems directly with the provider. Before visits begin, check they hold Working with Children clearances, police clearances and public liability cover where relevant.

Visits should follow a care plan, keeping within DVA's approval. Payment can run two ways: you pay and get reimbursed, or DVA settles the provider's bill directly. DVA's notes on providers add that DVA's hourly rate usually tracks the carer's training level under a Fair Work award.

How Much DVA Covers

Payments follow what your assessment supports, within a weekly ceiling. That ceiling marks the most DVA can usually pay, not a standard amount.

Every 1 July, the ceiling is indexed against consumer prices. DVA's MRCA rates page lists the current attendant care maximum, and last year's figure is shown for comparison:

No Ceiling for Catastrophic Injuries

The ceiling no longer applies after DVA formally classes your injury as catastrophic. First, a credentialed assessor must rate your impairment at 5 or lower on any FIM item, a scale of functional independence.

DVA also has to accept that the harm meets its catastrophic standard in one of five areas: blindness, burns, amputation, brain or nerve damage. DVA's catastrophic injury page explains both steps. Care still tracks your assessed need, so a catastrophic finding raises nothing automatically.

How It Sits Beside Other DVA Help

Several DVA programs fund personal care, but DVA avoids funding the same support twice. The table compares the three main ones.

Where VHC Comes In

Veterans' Home Care, DVA's lighter in-home program, can assess cardholders who are based at home and find daily tasks hard. If the assessment supports it, they may receive a limited amount of personal care.

The need can stem from any condition, accepted or not, though holding a qualifying Veteran Card remains a must. DVA steers people with heavier care needs toward nursing instead.

After DVA approves MRCA attendant care, VHC personal care ends for you, including any already running. Respite works differently: within DVA, only VHC offers it, so eligible cardholders keep access. Our respite care guide has the options.

If DVA finds no attendant care need, VHC's own assessment is still open to holders of either Veteran Card who live at home. The number to call is 1300 550 450.

VHC eligibility has its own article on our site.

Nursing Visits

DVA's community nursing scheme funds visits by nurses and care workers for card holders who qualify. A referral in writing comes first, then a nurse visits to judge what clinical care you need.

Any personal care those visits provide counts when DVA sizes its attendant care funding. Our nursing care guide goes deeper on referrals.

Other Funded Schemes

If NDIS support is in place, you pick whether the NDIS or DVA funds such care. DVA's policy on other relevant matters rules out both funding identical help.

DVA also won't cover help that another scheme, for example My Aged Care, already funds. Whenever you seek or begin support through another program, such as the NDIS, keep DVA informed.

When Life Changes

Your approval mirrors how you live now, so DVA must hear when that changes. Contact DVA in these situations:

• A hospital or respite stay begins, planned or not
• A trip away is planned
• You need more help or less
• You are moving house, or moving into care for good
• Another scheme, such as the NDIS, starts helping you or you apply to it

No attendant care is paid while a hospital or respite service looks after you. Moving permanently into palliative or residential care stops payments from the move-in date.

Should you return home, payments may resume, perhaps after a fresh assessment.

Before an approval runs out, DVA checks whether it holds enough current evidence to renew it. If not, a new form, a fresh assessment or both could be needed.

Travel and Living Overseas

Attendant care cannot cover the fares or lodging of a carer who accompanies you on a journey. The travel section of DVA's policy manual makes that clear.

One narrow exception runs through rehabilitation for anyone needing care around the clock. A rehab plan may then pay a professionally qualified carer's travel and lodging for approved psychosocial rehab activities.

Journeys to treatment follow separate rules for a companion, which our treatment travel guide covers.

Living abroad is no bar to claiming. DVA uses the same tests and, with receipts, can repay costs in AUD.

Where Our Team Helps

We start by helping veterans prepare claims for their conditions, then look at which supports suit their situation. That includes the daily tasks your conditions now prevent and the proof the form calls for.

Our after-claim support helps you frame an attendant care claim around the proof DVA expects. We leave hands-on care to providers. As a fee-based private firm, we sit outside DVA.

Keeping Your Routine at Home

Should an accepted injury turn washing, dressing or eating into a daily challenge, attendant care could bring help into your home.

We have supported over 10,000 veterans through the DVA claims process. To chat about your situation, contact Veterans First Consulting.