SIL is changing: what NDIS providers need to know before 1 July 2026.

If you deliver Supported Independent Living (SIL), 2026 is the biggest regulatory shift the sector has seen. This guide walks through what's changing, when it takes effect, and what SIL providers should be doing right now to stay compliant and keep getting paid.

Mandatory registration is here for SIL.

From 1 July 2026, every provider delivering Supported Independent Living supports must be registered with the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission. This closes a long-standing gap where SIL — one of the highest-risk, highest-value support categories in the Scheme — could be delivered by unregistered providers with far less oversight than other regulated supports.

The change runs alongside a parallel mandatory registration requirement for NDIS digital platform providers, and both stem from recommendations made by the NDIS Review, the Disability Royal Commission, and the NDIS Provider and Worker Registration Taskforce. The rationale is straightforward: SIL involves in-home, often unsupervised, personal support in shared accommodation, and the Commission wants full visibility over who is delivering it.

Once registered, SIL providers are subject to independent audits, suitability assessments, ongoing reporting requirements, and mandatory worker screening — not as a one-off hurdle, but as a continuing condition of operating.

A new claim code replaces the old one.

Alongside registration, the way SIL is claimed is changing. For supports delivered before 1 July 2026, keep using the existing code: 0115 — Assistance with daily life tasks in a group or shared living arrangement. For supports delivered from 1 July 2026 onward, all providers — registered, newly registered, and those with an application in progress — must claim under the new code: 0138 — Assistance with Supported Independent Living.

This isn't a cosmetic rename. Code 0138 is tied directly to the new registration group, which means your ability to claim against it depends on your registration status.

Plan managers have been told to only pay 0138 invoices where the provider is registered under 0138, has a pending application lodged after delivering SIL before 1 July 2026, or falls under other transitional arrangements. If your registration status isn't sorted, expect claims to bounce.

The dates that actually matter.

The compliance calendar is tight, and the certification pathway is slow, so the two need to be read together.

• 1 July 2026 — New code 0138 takes effect. The new SIL Practice Standards Supplementary Module becomes enforceable. The mandatory registration requirement begins.
• 1 October 2026 — Deadline for unregistered providers already delivering SIL to have lodged a registration application if they want to keep operating.
• After 30 September 2026 — Unregistered providers who haven't applied can no longer claim for SIL supports. Plan managers are directed to reject their invoices from this point.

The catch: NDIS Commission registration via the Certification pathway, which is what SIL requires, typically takes 8 to 12 months from start to finish, covering document preparation, an external audit, and Commission assessment. If you're not already registered and haven't started the process, 1 October is not a soft deadline — providers who wait until Q3 2026 to begin are cutting it extremely fine, if not missing the window entirely.

Lodging an application by 1 October keeps you trading through the transition. It doesn't mean you're registered. Start now.

New SIL Practice Standards: what auditors will actually check.

Registration isn't just paperwork — it comes with a dedicated SIL Supplementary Module of the NDIS Practice Standards, built specifically for the realities of shared accommodation and daily support delivery. It sits on top of the Core Module that already applies to every registered provider, and stacks with other relevant modules, commonly High Intensity Daily Personal Activities and Implementing Behaviour Support Plans, where those supports are also delivered.

The module is organised around four standards:

1. Supported Decision-Making — demonstrating that participants are actively supported to make their own choices about their home, support, and daily life, not just informed after the fact.
2. Safeguarding — systems and practice that protect participants from violence, abuse, neglect, and exploitation, with particular attention to the dynamics of shared living.
3. Practice Governance — evidence that workers are trained, supervised, and genuinely competent for the complexity of SIL work, not just rostered.
4. Agreements about tenancy, housing and support arrangements — clear, participant-understood documentation separating the tenancy relationship from the support relationship, and how the two interact.

On top of the module itself, every worker delivering SIL through a registered provider must hold a current NDIS Worker Screening Check. Checks are valid for five years — if one lapses, that worker needs to be pulled from risk-assessed duties immediately, not when it's convenient to renew.

If your current documentation, induction process, or governance records were built for a lighter-touch environment, assume they won't be sufficient and start closing the gaps before an auditor finds them.

Pricing has moved too.

The NDIA's annual pricing update also lands on 1 July 2026, and it's been rebadged: what used to be the Pricing Arrangements and Price Limits (PAPL) is now the NDIS Pricing Schedule.

Key movements for SIL providers to factor into service agreements and rosters:

• The standard weekday daytime rate for a Level 1 support worker has risen from $70.23 to $73.58 per hour — an increase of roughly 4.8%, the largest single-year jump in several years, flowing through every shift type: weekday, evening, weekend, public holiday.
• The SIL sleepover rate has moved to $311.79 nationally.
• Increases largely track the Fair Work Annual Wage Review's flow-through to the SCHADS Award, which underpins NDIS support worker rate ceilings.

Participant plans are being adjusted and indexed from mid-July to reflect the new rates, but that adjustment isn't automatic for every service agreement. Agreements need to be checked and updated, not assumed to be current.

What SIL providers should be doing right now.

Treat this as a compliance sprint, not a background task.

If you're already registered: confirm your registration extends to, or has been updated for, group 0138. Brief your billing team on the 0115 → 0138 cutover. Update service agreements with the new July 2026 pricing. Pressure-test your documentation against the four SIL Practice Standards, particularly supported decision-making records and tenancy/support agreement separation, which are new areas of specific focus.

If you're not yet registered: don't wait for the 1 October deadline to start. Given 8–12 month Certification timelines, lodging in the second half of 2026 is genuinely risky. Get your quality management system, incident management, worker screening, and governance evidence audit-ready now, and engage an approved quality auditor early — they're likely to be in high demand as the deadline approaches.

Either way: talk to your plan management partners now about how they'll be validating your registration status on invoices from July, so payments don't get held up over a documentation mismatch.

The takeaway.

SIL is moving from a relatively open market to a regulated, audited, registration-gated service category, with a new claim code, a dedicated Practice Standards module, mandatory worker screening, and updated pricing all arriving at once. The policy intent is better safeguarding for people in shared, supported accommodation, but the operational burden falls on providers, and the timeline is tighter than the headline dates suggest.

The providers who come through this smoothly will be the ones treating registration as a 2026 project starting now, not a 2026 deadline to meet later.

This article summarises publicly available information from the NDIS and the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission as at July 2026. It's general information, not legal or compliance advice — always confirm current requirements and your specific obligations directly with the NDIS Commission (ndiscommission.gov.au) or the NDIS (ndis.gov.au) before making registration or claiming decisions.