Where every figure here comes from.

The one rule underneath all of this

We never invent a fact about a treatment service. If a service has not published something, the profile says not published — it does not say zero, it does not leave a tidy blank, and it does not fill the gap with what a similar service does. A good deal of every profile in this directory is made of those gaps, and showing them is the honest thing to do: an unanswered question is information you can act on, and a fabricated answer is not.

The corollary is that we look thinner than directories that make things up. A rehab site quoting a live bed count, a star rating for every service and a confident price for all of them is not better sourced than we are. It is inventing.

Where the information comes from

Every profile is compiled from the provider’s own published material and from public records — state and federal health department registers, the ACNC charity register, ASIC, and the services’ own websites. Where those disagree, the provider’s own current published material wins, and the conflict is recorded rather than quietly resolved.

We prefer a provider-published or a government source to a commercial directory every time. Where a figure appears only on a third-party listing site, it does not go in.

415 of the 690 services listed have been checked against the provider’s own material. The rest carry what the public record holds, and say so on the profile.

Prices, and why some of them say “indicative”

This is the part worth reading carefully. Almost no private residential service in Australia publishes what it charges. Of the 71 private residential and detox services listed, 8 publish a rate we can convert to a 28-day figure.

A private fee is no longer shown on a public profile. Choosing treatment on price is how a family rules out the service that would have suited them, so the figure belongs in a conversation with the provider rather than at the top of a page. Everything below is how a band is worked out, and it still governs what a professional referrer sees in their workspace and what a provider is held to. Services that publish a cost model rather than a fee — free, bulk billed, a weekly contribution — still show it.

Every band carries how it was arrived at, and that wording never drops:

• Published — the provider’s own rate, converted to 28 days. 8 services.
• Indicative — no published rate, so the band is placed from what the service publishes about its rooms, grounds and amenities. 32 services.
• Private health fund — a licensed private hospital, where the fund pays the admission and you pay an excess and any gap. There is no programme fee to band. 31 services.

The amenity method works because what a service chooses to photograph tracks what it charges, across the ones that do publish a rate. Tested against those, it places most services in the right band and the rest one band out. So it reliably separates a $50,000 retreat from a $20,000 one. It cannot tell $38,000 from $25,000, and we do not pretend otherwise.

An indicative band is not a quote and it is not the provider’s number. It disappears the moment they publish their own. Whatever the band says, ask for a written total for the length of stay you are actually considering, and ask what is billed separately.

What we deliberately do not show

• Bed availability. No service in Australia publishes it. Any directory showing a live bed count has made it up.
• Success rates. There is no agreed definition of success in addiction treatment and no independent body auditing the claims. A percentage on a rehab website is a marketing figure.
• Our own opinion of a service. We do not rank, score or recommend. Ordering follows your filters and how much each service has published — nothing else.
• Reviews we cannot stand behind. Reviews are collected and verified only for services that have claimed their profile. No reviews on a profile does not mean bad reviews.

How the ordering works

Search results follow your filters. Within them, the default order is by how much each service has published, because a profile that answers more of your questions is more useful than one that answers fewer. You can re-sort by name at any time.

No service pays to appear, to rank, or to be shown ahead of another. Claiming a profile does not move a service up the list. If that ever changes, it will say so on this page before it happens.

Photographs

122 of 690 services have a photograph, taken from the service’s own website. Where there is none, the card shows a plain plate with the service’s initials rather than a stock photograph of somewhere else — a picture of a building that is not the building is a lie about the most emotive thing on the page.

When we get it wrong

We will. 690 services change their programmes, prices and staff constantly, and some of what is here was accurate when it was read and is not now. Tell us on the contact page and name the service and the detail. Every correction is checked at the source before anything changes, and nothing is deleted — a corrected record keeps its history.

How this is paid for

Private providers pay to claim a profile. Publicly funded and not-for-profit services never pay anything and are listed on identical terms. How it works sets that out in detail, including the obvious tension in it: the services who can pay us are the expensive ones.