Supported Independent Living (SIL)

Supported Independent Living (SIL) is NDIS funding for help or supervision with daily life tasks — personal care, cooking, household routines — delivered in the participant's home, most often a shared house with other participants. It's for people with higher support needs, and it frequently means support around the clock, every day of the year.

The roster of care

SIL funding is built on a roster of care — a week-by-week picture of the support each resident needs, which the NDIA uses to work out funding. It captures:

Support ratios: when someone needs one-to-one support and when support is shared (one worker to two or three residents),
Overnight type: active overnight shifts versus sleepovers, which are funded and paid differently,
The weekly rhythm of mornings, evenings and weekends across the house.

The staff delivering it are usually employed under the SCHADS Award, so sleepover rules, broken shifts and minimum payments all land on the same roster the funding model does.

What good looks like

In shared homes, continuity is quality: residents do best with a steady, familiar team, not a parade of strangers. The providers who manage SIL well treat the roster as part of the service itself — stable patterns, genuine handovers between shifts, and changes communicated to the whole house team, not just whoever's next on.

National Disability Insurance Scheme Act 2013 (Cth) and NDIA SIL operational guidance — provider conduct overseen by the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission.

Tommy gives SIL teams one shared view of who's on at each house, with shift notes and messages attached — so handovers and changes reach everyone.

Related terms

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