If you have reached a point where you cannot give your loved one the kind of care they need, this is for you.
The National Disability Insurance Scheme has included the Supported Independent Living (SIL) support category to give you some respite. What this care category funding pays for is round the clock support from professionals. These professionals will attend to your loved one’s every need in ways you would not be able to.
To access this funding, the NDIS will assess your loved one’s support needs and recommend SIL transition if need be. The NDIS rarely funds SIL for participants at home, which means that your loved one might have to move to a care home.
This change can be really big for your family and for your loved one. And after coming to terms with it, a new challenge arises: how to figure out the SIL transition for your loved one so they do not lose the progress towards independence that they have made. This guide is your framework for successfully navigating this challenge.
Supported Independent Living, or SIL, is an NDIS-funded support for people who need significant help or supervision at home. This category specifically was created to pay for round the clock professional support that will help your loved one live as independently as possible while building skills for everyday life.
It is not a house, home or facility where your loved one lives and receives care. It is a payment for services to an SIL provider, who ensures that your loved one is catered to wherever they live. If they live in a home or facility run by an SIL provider, they can get support 24/7 depending on their needs.
The running costs of the home where they live is a separate matter. This is paid for out of pocket or using other funding categories of their NDIS plan.
For families hearing about SIL for the first time or considering SIL transition, this is important to note. It is also important to factor in the fact that SIL is not a one-size-fits-all plan for everyone who gets the funding.
Supported Independent Living is also one of the home and living supports that the NDIS funds.
These category options were created to help people living with disability feel safer in their preferred environment. Others in these categories are:
Each of these, as you must have surmised, serves a different purpose. Also, your loved one can have a combination of one or more of these options in their NDIS plan.
It is also good to understand this because sometimes, SIL might not be what your loved one needs. ILO might work better for them in some cases. In others, they might just need assistance with daily living.
Before choosing the SIL transition, make sure to speak with support coordinators.
This thought arises because the NDIS leans towards funding care for participants who live away from their family home. It is very understandable to think this because your loved one, who has higher support needs, stands a better chance if they live away from you.
But it is not necessarily the case. Participants needing Supported Independent Living care can live alone, in a shared accommodation with other participants with disabilities or at home. What matters is what the NDIS discovers during their assessment of the participant’s needs.
Therefore, SIL transition is simply the process of changing how a person receives support at home. For some, it could mean moving out into a home or a private rental. For others, it could mean remaining in their family home, which may be modified to suit their increased support needs.
As we have come to understand, there is no single SIL experience. support staff assigned to your loved ones from the SIL service providers you employ can assist with anything from everyday tasks to just behaviour support. Below is a breakdown of the support your loved one should get from a well-structured SIL arrangement, according to SIL practice standards:
The SIL provider, together with your loved one’s support coordinators and/or allied health professionals who look after their health, will design the right kind of support for them. More importantly, your loved one gets to have a say in which kinds of support they want.
Having understood that Supported Independent Living brings a big change and that your loved one stands a higher chance of receiving this funding away from home, it is now time for the meat of the matter.
This guide is prepared to help families understand SIL transition. This means getting your loved one the right support team as they move into their private rental or a shared accommodation.
The first thing for families to do is to manage the emotions that come with such a big change. This is applicable in cases where the person needing the care has to move away. It is emotionally enormous, because of the detachments that will need to happen.
Even in cases where the support is given at home, there is a big emotional shift. Your loved one may have to create space for ‘strangers’. A family member might have to move out of the home to accommodate support team staff.
Before the formal application process begins, families can consider the following to manage the emotional weight of the change:
These experiences can reveal what works and what needs more preparation. They can also help the participant understand that moving out does not mean losing their family. More importantly, they can sow seeds of independence which the support workers will nurture.
The goal of this pre-administration period is to make the SIL transition not feel like something that just happens to a person. Where possible, your loved one should choose the experiences before the transition. This will make it easier for them to be involved in administrative decisions about:
This is in line with Supported decision-making, an important part of the new SIL regulatory framework.
The NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission’s SIL Practice Standards includes supported decision-making alongside safeguarding, practice governance and agreements concerning tenancy, housing and support arrangements.
Their disability should never strip them of the right to decide what happens in their own life.
This period is also the time for gathering evidence that supports the need for SIL transition. Build a case file with medical reports, occupational therapist’s notes, behaviour support plans and so on. This is what the NDIS will assess to determine whether or not SIL funding should be added to your loved one’s plan.
It goes without saying that your loved one’s support coordinator must be in on this decision to switch to Supported Independent Living. It is their work that will help coordinate the efforts of everyone involved in providing disability services and supports for your loved one into foolproof evidence to secure the funding from the NDIS.
Once the evidence is gathered to help make the case for SIL transition, and the funding is secured, the next step is to compare providers.
The easiest filter for SIL providers is to check if they are NDIS registered. This is especially important if they operate a home where your loved one can stay. The NDIS Digital Platform is a good place to start.
According to the NDIS SIL practice standards and the new regulatory framework, SIL providers must register with the NDIS and meet certification audit requirements by 1 July 2026. If the provider your family settles on is operating under the previous registration rules and framework, they have until 1 October 2026 to switch.
For best results, families should go for the ones who have joined the 0138 registration group. This group is for providers who have been registered as providers under the “Assistance with supported independent living” class. The government takes SIL seriously, so families should, too.
The next filter is to find out the kind of SIL experience they offer. Two providers may offer the same top-notch services with quality and continuity, but create different experiences.
Consider the following:
SIL transition involves much more than just finding the best house for your loved one. It involves making sure that they experience everything good that will spur their independent spirit.
If your loved one needs behaviour support, you all should be even more careful in choosing their SIL home.
In behaviour support, restrictive practices might be needed. Some of these practices have to follow specific legal and regulatory requirements or they can be classified as abuse.
Where this is a requirement, families must find out how the home operates with respect to these specifics before committing. Do the same with homes that offer behaviour support and restrictive practices as part of their SIL experience.
Families must also find out how their chosen homes handle reportable incidents. These are incidents such as falls, injuries, medication mishaps, infection control and so on. A good SIL arrangement needs clear systems for dealing with problems, so families must understand these systems before trusting their loved ones to their providers.
After choosing a provider, the next step is making sure that your loved one is comfortable with who they room with. For best results, choose one with individual units so that you can help your loved one recreate their space from your family home. This fosters their community participation spirit and makes relating with the support staff and the other housemates better.
Where an individual unit is not possible, families should help their loved one choose by asking about:
Where possible, arrange a meeting with potential housemates or roommates first to help your loved one find compatible ones. Do not give in to the overwhelming feeling of choosing the first available room. Matching your loved one with the wrong kind of roommate can stunt their growth.
When this is sorted, begin moving their things slowly to their new home. Start by giving them frequent tours of the place, then moving their stuff little by little into their units or rooms, and then spending a few nights with them. From there, increase the length of their stay gradually until they become comfortable with their new housemates and surroundings.
It is important to note that SIL does not cover rent, groceries and other household costs. It only covers the care support that the support workers provide. In a nutshell, SIL funding pays the workers for the time they spend helping your loved one become independent.
By month 9, your loved one should be able to spend at least a week on their own in their new home. This means that they would have adjusted their routines or developed new ones as they build independence with the help of the support workers.
Everyday activities such as cooking, cleaning, shopping, paying bills, managing money and maintaining household routines are opportunities for them to build independence. By the end of their first three months, they should be well adjusted to their new reality.
That is not to say that they will not deal with homesickness, anxiety, changes to their sleep patterns, housemate disagreements, and even some detachment issues. Families, however, must not panic when these issues are reported. Instead, look for patterns that can help your loved one fully settle in, together with their support team.
Most importantly, families should insist on quality and continuity in their loved one’s life. In practice, this means demanding that their loved one’s support workers not be changed arbitrarily. This is why finding out about the home’s staff turnover rate is important during the search phase.
Also, families should ask how a provider manages:
Continuity does not mean that the same worker must always be present; instead, it means there should be a reliable system for making sure your loved one feels safe in their new support system.
Families should note that choosing an SIL provider is a very reversible decision.
The role of the family remains the same, which is to act as the primary caregiver. The support staff should be seen as an extension of the family who has loved and cared for the participant all their lives.
While they should allow the professionals the space to do their jobs, and allow their loved ones the space to grow, families must stay in the picture.
A parent, sibling or relative should become:
This will take some adjustment. However, the goal is to make the participant’s life bigger, and allow the entire family to thrive.
Kindly note that this timeline is not set in stone. Delays can occur because of:
What this timeline provides is a framework for the transition to Supported Independent Living, which gives you and your loved one your lives back.
Start by learning more about Supported Independent Living. Follow up your learning by discussing the idea with your loved one and then their support coordinators. If it is deemed to be a good choice, the coordinators will help to organise the evidence that will help your loved one get the funding to make this transition.
In all of these, do not take away your loved one’s autonomy. They must be fully involved in the decision-making process. SIL practice standards require this, even.
The best SIL transition is the one that helps your loved one move toward a life that is safer, more independent and more genuinely their own.
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