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 a profile here can look thinner than one that fills every field. That is the trade, and it is deliberate: what is here is what the service or a public record actually says, so it is worth taking to the phone call.

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 691 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 you will not see one here

Almost no private residential service in Australia publishes what it charges. Across the whole directory — 691 services, of which 115 are private residential or detox — 60 have published a figure of any kind, and 34 state it as a total for the stay rather than a nightly or weekly rate.

We used to fill that gap with an estimate, placing a service in a price band from what it published about its rooms, grounds and amenities. That has been removed entirely. The method reasoned from how a place photographs to what it costs, which is a guess however carefully it is calibrated, and a guess about a figure this consequential should not carry our name on it.

So the rule is now short. Where a service publishes its price, we hold the figure and show it to professional referrers, who are placing someone against a known budget. Where it does not, the profile says it is not published. We do not estimate, and there are no bands.

A private fee is not shown on a public page at all. 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. Services that publish a cost model rather than a fee — free, bulk billed, a weekly contribution — still show it, because that is a fact about how a service charges rather than a number to shop on.

Whatever you are told, 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

• A live bed count we have not been given. Providers update their own availability in their portal; most have not yet, and where a service has not confirmed a figure we show nothing rather than a guess. A published capacity is how many places a service has, not how many are free.
• 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. Experience ratings come only from a short survey RehabFinder sends, with their agreement, to people admitted after an enquiry or referral through this site, or to the family member or carer who enquired, labelled as such. It is ratings only, with no written comments. Every service is treated the same whether it pays or not, results appear on a profile only as a summary once enough have been published, and a low rating is published on the same terms as a high one. 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

152 of 691 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. 691 services change what they offer, their prices and their 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.

What is free

Being listed here is free. So is claiming your profile, correcting it, and receiving the enquiries visitors send you — for every service, private or public. Publicly funded and not-for-profit services are never charged anything.

Paying changes none of these: where a service appears in search results, its position on a page, any ranking, or its ability to claim and update its own profile. How it works sets that out in detail.