Paid Family Care in New Zealand: How Whānau Can Get Paid to Care

You are already doing the work — showering your parent before the district nurse arrives, managing medication prompts, helping them dress. The difference between unpaid exhaustion and a sustainable arrangement might be one policy most families never hear about.

New Zealand's Paid Whānau and Family Care policy allows family members to become employed support workers through contracted Home and Community Support Services (HCSS) agencies, delivering funded personal care hours to their own parent or relative.

How Paid Whānau and Family Care Works

The policy sits within Health New Zealand's (Te Whatu Ora) existing HCSS framework. It does not create a separate funding stream — it allows a family member to fill the support worker role that would otherwise go to an agency-assigned stranger.

Here is the pathway:

1. Your parent must already have a NASC-assessed care plan with allocated personal care hours. No allocation means no paid role to fill.
2. Contact the contracted HCSS provider agency delivering your parent's care (e.g., Healthcare New Zealand, Geneva Health, Access Community Health, or a specialised Māori/Pacific provider).
3. Apply as a support worker through that agency. You become an employee of the agency, not an independent contractor. The agency handles payroll, tax, ACC levies, and clinical supervision.
4. Complete the agency's competency training. This covers manual handling, infection control, and medication safety protocols. The agency's registered nurse must sign off your competency before you start delivering care.
5. Deliver the allocated hours under the care plan. You are paid the agency's standard support worker rate for those hours.

The critical distinction: you are employed by the agency, not by your parent. This means you receive employment protections under the Employment Relations Act, including minimum wage guarantees, holiday pay, and KiwiSaver contributions.

What You Can and Cannot Do as a Paid Family Carer

Paid Whānau and Family Care covers the personal care hours allocated in your parent's NASC care plan — showering, dressing, toileting, mobility assistance, and safety monitoring.

It does not cover:

• Household management hours (cleaning, laundry, shopping) unless your parent holds a Community Services Card and those hours are separately allocated
• Companionship or social visiting — these are not clinical tasks
• Hours beyond the NASC allocation — if your parent needs more support than the funded hours, those additional hours remain unpaid family care or must be privately funded

You can combine paid shifts with private top-up hours through the same agency. This creates a single, consistent care schedule where you transition from funded shifts to private-pay hours without disrupting your parent's routine.

Pay Rates and Tax Treatment

As an agency employee, you receive the agency's standard hourly rate for home support workers. Following the 2017 pay equity settlement and subsequent increases, experienced HCSS workers earn between $25 and $32 per hour depending on qualifications, tenure, and the agency's pay scale.

Your tax obligations are straightforward — the agency operates PAYE, so your income tax, ACC earner levy, and KiwiSaver contributions are deducted at source. You do not need to register separately with Inland Revenue for this role.

However, if you instead hire a private support worker using your Carer Support Subsidy allocation (a separate arrangement from Paid Whānau Care), different tax rules apply. A private support worker providing care outside their own home for 30 hours or less per week is classified by the IRD as an IR56 private domestic worker, responsible for their own income tax. If they work more than 30 hours per week, you must register as an employer with Inland Revenue.

Who Is Not Eligible

The policy has boundaries. A spouse or partner living in the same household as the care recipient generally cannot be employed as their paid carer through this pathway — the relationship creates a conflict of interest under most agency employment policies.

The parent must also have enough cognitive capacity (or an activated Enduring Power of Attorney holder) to consent to the care arrangement. If there is a dispute among siblings about who should fill the paid carer role, the HCSS agency and NASC coordinator can mediate, but the final decision rests with the agency as the employer.

Making the Transition From Unpaid to Paid

If you are currently providing unpaid care and want to explore this pathway, the first step is confirming your parent's current NASC allocation. If they do not yet have a care plan, or their hours are insufficient, a reassessment may be needed — especially if their needs have increased since the last interRAI evaluation.

The Home and Community Support Services guide for New Zealand families walks through the full NASC referral and assessment process, including how to prepare for the interRAI assessment to ensure allocated hours reflect your parent's actual daily needs. It also covers the Carer Support Subsidy, IR56 tax rules for private arrangements, and how to combine funded care with private top-ups into a single workable schedule.

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