Let's talk about Dignity of Risk

Dignity of Risk is now a legal requirement under the Aged Care Act 2024, and an explicit obligation and expectation on Registered Providers.

But how does that translate to clinical practice?

For Occupational Therapists, there is often tension and pressure:

Pressure to sign off on equipment that maybe is not suitable or indicated.

Pressure to "make it work" within the available budget.

Pressure to stretch clinical reasoning to fit the system.

The system expects providers and clinicians to balance autonomy, safety, funding rules, and legal accountability, often all at once.

That’s where the concept of dignity of risk comes in.

But here’s the reality: dignity of risk is frequently misunderstood.

Some interpret it as “the client can choose whatever they want.” Others believe it means “we must avoid all risk.”

Neither interpretation reflects the professional or legal reality.

Dignity of risk sits in the grey zone between those two extremes.

The Shift Happening in Aged Care

The new Support at Home program places a strong emphasis on consumer choice and autonomy.

At the same time, the system is moving toward greater scrutiny of decisions through program assurance and compliance processes. Providers and clinicians may be asked to demonstrate that decisions were:

• clinically justified

• properly documented

• consistent with funding rules

• and made with informed consent.

  
  

For Occupational Therapists, this means the way we approach risk conversations, documentation, and decision-making matters more than ever.

When a client chooses differently from clinical advice, the question is no longer simply “what would be safest?”

Instead, we must ask:

• What risk is reasonable?

• What level of autonomy should be supported?

• When does the OT have a responsibility to decline a request?

• What must be documented if a client chooses to proceed anyway?

These questions require not only your clinical hat, but also a legal and regulatory hat too.

Check out our 'Dignity of Risk for OTs in Support at Home' webinar on-demand under Self Paced Learning.

In the session, we are joined by a lawyer from Legal Vision, and we unpack:

• What dignity of risk actually requires under Support at Home,

• How the Strengthened Quality Standards apply to OT practice, and

• How to manage the tension between provider expectations, duty of care, and client choice.

• We use real OT case scenarios to explore practical documentation, defensible decision-making, and risk conversations.