What the New Aged Care Act Means for Mental Health Support in Residential Care

New rights, new standards — and what providers need to know about specialist psychosocial support

In November 2025, the new Aged Care Act came into effect — bringing with it a significant shift in how residential aged care providers are expected to support residents' mental health, palliative care needs, and psychosocial wellbeing.

For many providers, the question is no longer whether to offer specialist mental health support, but how — and what 'specialist' actually means in this context. This post offers an overview of the key requirements and explores what genuine clinical psychotherapy looks like when embedded within a residential aged care setting.

The New Rights Framework

The Aged Care Act (2025) establishes a rights-based framework for aged care in Australia. Among its most significant provisions is the explicit right of every person in government-funded aged care to receive palliative and end-of-life care.

This is not simply a clinical obligation. It is a rights-based entitlement — and providers who cannot demonstrate how they are meeting it, including its emotional and psychosocial dimensions, face compliance risk under the new framework.

The Strengthened Quality Standards: What They Require

The Strengthened Quality Standards, published by the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission (ACQSC), set out clear expectations for providers in relation to mental health and psychosocial wellbeing:

•         Optimising residents' mental health and emotional wellbeing

•         Recognising and responding to deterioration — including psychological deterioration

•         Supporting residents experiencing distress, grief, or significant life transitions

•         Providing access to palliative and end-of-life care that addresses emotional and existential needs

•         Documenting psychosocial care in a way that demonstrates rights-based, person-centred practice

The ACQSC has also published specific guidance on loss and grief at the point of transition — acknowledging that the move into residential care is itself a major loss event that warrants specialist support.

Why General Support Is Not Enough

Most residential aged care facilities already offer lifestyle programming, pastoral care, and social activities. These are valuable — but they are not the same as specialist psychotherapy.

The Strengthened Quality Standards explicitly require providers to recognise and respond to psychological deterioration. This is a clinical function. Identifying whether a resident's withdrawal reflects depression, adjustment disorder, or anticipatory grief — and responding appropriately — requires clinical training that lifestyle and pastoral care teams are not typically equipped to provide.

Supporting families through anticipatory grief, family conflict, or early bereavement is similarly a distinct clinical function — not adequately addressed by occasional social worker contact or a single post-death phone call.

What Specialist Psychosocial Support Looks Like

Specialist psychosocial support in aged care means clinical psychotherapy — delivered by a qualified, registered practitioner — available across the full arc of a resident's journey:

•         Assessment and ongoing support for residents experiencing psychological distress at admission

•         Anticipatory grief counselling for families across the period of decline

•         Values-based end-of-life conversations that attend to emotional as well as practical needs

•         Family communication and mediation support — particularly where conflict exists

•         Early bereavement follow-up for families in the weeks following a resident's death

This is precisely what Llumus provides — and it is structured to complement, not replicate, what lifestyle and pastoral care teams already offer.

How Llumus Works With Providers

Llumus works in partnership with residential aged care providers in Sydney to embed specialist psychotherapy within their care model. Engagements are structured to align with Quality Standards documentation requirements, and can include regular reporting to clinical teams.

If you are a provider seeking to understand how Llumus could support your organisation's compliance and care quality, Olivia Andrews would welcome a conversation.

Olivia Andrews is a PACFA Clinical Registrant and specialist in palliative and bereavement psychotherapy. She leads Llumus, a specialist psychotherapy practice serving residential aged care providers and families in Sydney.