The Carer visa (836 and 116): caring for a relative with a long-term medical condition

MARN 1576536

What the visa is

The Carer visa grants permanent residence to a person who will provide substantial and continuing care to an Australian relative, or to a member of that relative's family unit, who has a long-term medical condition. It is a family visa in the Other Family stream, alongside the Remaining Relative and Aged Dependent Relative visas, and like them it is capped each program year and queued. It carries a sponsorship, an assurance of support is not required, and once granted it is ordinary permanent residence: the carer can work, study and later apply for citizenship, and is not bound to the care beyond the undertaking given at grant.

Who can sponsor

The sponsor is the person who needs care, or a member of their family unit on their behalf, and must be an Australian citizen, permanent resident or eligible New Zealand citizen, aged 18 or over, usually resident in Australia for at least two years, and settled here. The person needing care must be the sponsor or a member of the sponsor's family unit who lives with them. Where the person needing care is a child or an adult who cannot sponsor, a parent or partner sponsors on their behalf.

Who can apply

The applicant must be a relative of the sponsor or of the sponsor's spouse or de facto partner: a child or step-child, a parent or step-parent, a brother or sister including step and half siblings, a grandparent or grandchild, or an aunt, uncle, niece or nephew, including step relationships. A cousin or a friend does not qualify. The applicant must be willing and able to provide the care, which means being physically present, available for the hours the care requires, and capable of it; a relative who intends to work full time while a service does the care is not what the visa is for. The applicant's own family unit can be included. Health and character apply, and the applicant's own health is read against the capacity to provide care.

The medical assessment

The need for care is not established by the family's doctor. The person needing care attends a medical assessment through Bupa Medical Visa Services, which issues a certificate stating whether they have a medical condition that is long-term, whether it impairs their ability to attend to the practical aspects of daily life, whether they need substantial and continuing assistance as a result, and whether that need will last at least two years. The assessment considers the condition, not the family's preferences, and a rating that falls short of the threshold ends the application. Reports from treating specialists are provided to the assessor and matter, which is why the file is prepared before the assessment is booked. The certificate has a validity period, and the application is lodged within it.

The availability test

The applicant must satisfy the Department that the care cannot reasonably be provided by any other relative of the person in Australia, and cannot reasonably be obtained from welfare, hospital, nursing or community services in Australia. Both limbs are tested with evidence, and both are where applications fail. On the first, every adult relative in Australia is identified and the reason each cannot provide the care is explained and evidenced: their own work, health, family responsibilities, distance. On the second, the services available in the person's area are identified and the reason they do not meet the need is shown: waiting lists, cost, the nature of the care, the hours, a cultural or language need that services cannot meet. A person already receiving an aged care package that meets their needs is not a person for whom care is unavailable. A person whose needs are met only because a relative on a visitor visa has been doing it for a year has a different case, and the visitor's compliance with their own visa is then examined.

Onshore 836 and offshore 116

The 836 is applied for in Australia by a person who holds a substantive visa without condition 8503, or who holds a bridging visa or no visa and meets the Schedule 3 criteria or has them waived. A visitor whose grant carries 8503, which includes every sponsored family visitor visa, cannot apply onshore; the choice is a waiver request on the narrow test or leaving to apply for the 116. The 836 applicant is granted a bridging visa, usually with work rights, for the whole of the queue period, and must be in Australia at grant. The 116 is applied for from outside Australia and the applicant must be outside at grant; they may visit in the meantime on a visitor visa, where one is granted, and the pattern of visits is read against the genuine temporary entrant test.

The queue

Other Family visas are subject to an annual cap that is small, and applications that meet the criteria are given a queue date and released for final decision in order as places become available. The wait has run to several years and is published on the Department's processing times page for the stream. During the queue the application is not refused; it waits. Health and police checks are done at the end, not the beginning, and a change in the person's condition, a death, or the carer's own change of circumstances is notified and can end the application. The queue is also why the onshore 836, with its bridging visa and work rights, is so much more useful than the 116 for a family that can lawfully bring the carer to Australia first.

Evidence

• The Bupa medical assessment certificate, with the specialist reports provided to the assessor.
• Proof of the relationship between applicant and sponsor: birth and marriage certificates through each link.
• The sponsor's status and residence: citizenship or permanent visa, and two years' residence.
• A statement and evidence for each relative in Australia explaining why they cannot provide the care.
• Evidence of the services available and why they do not meet the need: assessments, waiting-list letters, quotes, a care plan.
• The applicant's statement of what care they will provide, their availability and capacity, and evidence they have provided it before where they have.
• Health and character for the applicant and any family members included.

Alternatives

Where the person needing care is a parent, the parent visa routes exist alongside the Carer visa, and the temporary 870 can bring a parent for years at a time while a permanent application waits; where the carer is the parent of an Australian child, the parent routes apply the other way round. A relative who is already in Australia on another visa with a path of its own, a student, a sponsored worker, a partner, often reaches permanence sooner by that path than through the Carer queue. And a visitor visa with a longer stay can bridge a period of acute need, within the limits of 8558 and the genuine visit test. The Carer visa is the right answer when the need is real, the relatives and services genuinely cannot meet it, and the family can wait; the consultation is where those three are tested against the facts.

Book a consultation — $330 inc. GST, credited

General information only, current at October 2026; not advice on your own case. Subclasses 836 and 116, Schedule 2 of the Migration Regulations 1994, and the carer definition in regulation 1.15AA, as in force at the date above; queue and cap figures are the Department of Home Affairs’. Outcomes depend on the Department’s assessment of each application; no registered migration agent can guarantee a result (Code of Conduct, Migration Agents Regulations). Keshab Chapagain, MARN 1576536.