Supported Independent Living (SIL) Under the NDIS

What SIL covers, and what it doesn't

SIL funds paid support at home across the whole week, built around what you can and can't do for yourself. Depending on your needs, it can include:

• Personal care, such as showering, dressing and grooming.
• Cooking and preparing meals.
• Help taking your medication.
• Household tasks like cleaning and laundry.
• Supervision, so someone is there when you need help.
• Overnight support, from a worker who sleeps over or one who stays awake.
• Building skills, such as cooking, budgeting and running a household, so you need less help over time.

SIL doesn't pay for:

• The home itself, or rent.
• Food, groceries and household bills.
• Specialist Disability Accommodation (SDA), which is separate funding for specially designed homes.

Other supports, such as therapy, support coordination and transport, are funded separately in your plan.

Who is eligible for SIL?

SIL suits NDIS participants with higher support needs who need some level of help at home all the time. That could be someone with an intellectual disability, autism, a physical disability, an acquired brain injury or a psychosocial disability. What counts is how much support you need, not your diagnosis.

The NDIA funds SIL when it's reasonable and necessary for you. It looks at:

• Your support needs: what you can do yourself and where you need help, often shown in an occupational therapist's functional assessment.
• Your home and living goals, such as moving out of the family home or into a shared house.
• Whether SIL is the best fit: how it compares with other ways of meeting your needs, including on cost.

If you only need help at certain times of the day, regular support worker hours from your Core budget may suit you better than SIL. See NDIS support worker rates.

SIL vs SDA vs ILO

These three home and living supports are easy to mix up. In short: SIL is the support, SDA is the home, and ILO is support designed around the way you want to live.

How SIL is funded: the roster of care

SIL funding is based on the support you need across a typical week. That's set out in a roster of care: an hour-by-hour picture of when you need support, and whether a worker is with you alone or shared with housemates. It's usually prepared with your SIL provider, with help from your support coordinator if you have one, and the NDIA uses it, with evidence of your support needs, to decide your SIL funding.

A roster of care shows:

• Hours and times. Support on weekday days, evenings and nights, weekends and public holidays, because each has its own price limit.
• Support ratios. 1:1 means a worker just for you. 1:2 or 1:3 means one worker shares their time between two or three housemates.
• Overnight support. A sleepover, where a worker sleeps at the home and can be woken if you need help, or active overnight support, where a worker stays awake.
• High intensity support. Hours where you need a worker with extra skills for complex needs.

How shared support is split. When one worker supports several people at once, the cost of that time is shared. At a 1:3 ratio on a weekday daytime, each of the three residents' plans pays a third of the $73.58 price limit, about $24.53 an hour. Time when you need a worker to yourself is charged in full to your plan. That's why sharing a home stretches SIL funding further, and why who you live with matters.

SIL sits in your Core supports budget, under Assistance with Daily Life. If your needs change, ask your provider to update the roster and contact the NDIA about changing your plan. Our SIL cost estimator gives a rough weekly and yearly cost by household size and support level.

If you disagree with the NDIA's decision about your SIL funding, you can ask for an internal review within 3 months of getting it, and then apply to the Administrative Review Tribunal if you still disagree.

SIL price limits 2026-27

The most a provider can charge for one hour of a worker's time, or for one sleepover, from 1 July 2026. Remote and very remote areas have higher limits.

• Weekday daytime is a shift that starts at or after 6am and finishes by 8pm. Evening finishes after 8pm and by midnight. Night runs past midnight or starts before 6am.
• High intensity limits apply to hours where you need a worker with extra skills for complex needs.
• These are maximums. A provider can charge less, and if your plan is agency managed or plan managed, it can't charge more.
• In shared hours, your plan pays only your share of the price.

See every NDIS price limit in our NDIS price guide 2026-27.

What you pay yourself: rent, board and bills

SIL covers your support. Living costs are yours, as they are for anyone renting a home. Expect to pay:

• Rent. It depends on the home: the rent on your lease in a private rental, a rent usually based on your income in social housing, or a reasonable rent contribution in an SDA home.
• Board. In a shared home, housemates usually split the cost of groceries and household items, sometimes as a set weekly amount.
• Bills. Electricity, gas, water, internet and phone, often shared between housemates.
• Personal costs. Clothes, toiletries, outings, hobbies and anything else that's just for you.

If you get the Disability Support Pension and rent privately or in community housing, you may be able to get Commonwealth Rent Assistance from Services Australia. Before you move in, ask the provider for every weekly cost in writing, and what each one covers.

Finding SIL vacancies and SIL providers

A SIL vacancy is either a room in a shared home where support is already set up, or a provider with staff to support you in your own home. Shared homes have a set number of rooms, and fitting in with the people who already live there matters, so a good vacancy can take time to find.

• Ask your support coordinator. They can search for vacancies, contact providers and help plan the move. What a support coordinator does.
• Contact SIL providers in the area you want to live and ask what they have available now.
• Send one request through Help Alliance. We send it to providers who serve your suburb and offer SIL. Up to three who can start accept it and contact you directly, and you choose who to go with.

Visit the home, meet the housemates and the staff, and ask the questions below before you agree to anything.

Questions to ask a SIL provider

• Can you start when I need, and do you have a room in a shared home, or staff to support me in my own home?
• Who lives in the home now, how do you decide who moves in, and can I meet them first?
• How many different workers would I see in a week, and how do you keep the same people on my roster? Who covers when someone is sick or on leave?
• What experience do your workers have with my disability and my support needs?
• How will you build my roster of care, and how are shared hours split between housemates?
• Is overnight support a sleepover or an active overnight worker?
• What will I pay each week for rent, board and bills, and what's included?
• If you also own or manage the home, could I change support provider without moving out?
• How do I change my supports if my needs change, and how do I make a complaint?

Put what you agree in writing in a service agreement. For more to ask, use our NDIS provider checklist.

Supported Independent Living questions

Related guides

• SDA housing guide
• All NDIS housing options
• SIL cost estimator
• NDIS price guide 2026-27
• NDIS support coordination
• SIL providers in Perth