Who Controls the Money in a SIL House

Who Controls the Money in a Supported House

Of all the things that go wrong in supported living, money is the one least likely to appear in an incident report and most likely to go on for years.

It is not usually theft in the dramatic sense. It is a resident’s card kept in the office drawer because it is easier. A household food kitty with no receipts. A support worker buying their own lunch on the same transaction. Birthday money that nobody can account for. A phone plan in the resident’s name that somebody else uses. Each of those is small, each has a plausible explanation, and the cumulative effect on somebody with no independent way to check is substantial.

This is worth getting right at the start, because it is almost impossible to reconstruct later.

The legal position first

An adult controls their own money unless there is a specific legal reason they do not. That is the starting point and it is not displaced by convenience.

Where a person cannot manage their own finances, the arrangements in New South Wales are:

• an enduring power of attorney, appointed by the person themselves while they had capacity, for financial and property decisions; or
• a financial management order from the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal, appointing either a private financial manager or NSW Trustee and Guardian.

Note what is not on that list. A guardian appointed for personal and lifestyle decisions has no authority over money. An NDIA nominee has authority in dealings with the agency, not over a bank account. A family member who has always handled it has no authority at all unless one of the two arrangements above exists. And a support provider has none in any circumstance.

That last point is the one that matters most in a house. A provider holding and spending a resident’s money without a legal basis is acting outside its authority even when it is acting kindly, and it is exposing both itself and the resident. The broader picture of who can decide what is set out in guardianship, consent and supported decision-making in NSW.

What a provider should and should not be doing

Should: support the person to manage their own money. This is a funded part of supported independent living — to use a card, check a balance, plan a fortnight, pay a bill, understand what things cost. This is funded support and it is a genuine skill-building activity.

Should: keep records of any transaction a worker is involved in, with receipts, on the day.

Should: keep the resident’s money entirely separate from the household’s and from the provider’s.

Should not: hold a resident’s card or PIN as a matter of routine convenience.

Should not: be the only party with visibility of a resident’s spending.

Should not: operate a pooled household account with no reconciliation.

Should not: have staff purchasing anything for themselves on a resident’s account, under any explanation.

Should not: be a signatory on a resident’s bank account.

Household money versus personal money

These are two different things and conflating them is where most problems start.

Household money is the pooled contribution each resident makes toward shared costs — electricity, gas, water usage, internet, food if it is bought collectively, cleaning products and consumables. It is the resident’s money, pooled by agreement, for shared benefit.

Personal money is everything else: clothes, haircuts, phone, outings, presents, savings, the things that make a life a person’s own.

A well-run house keeps them visibly apart. Household contributions go to a nominated account with a stated purpose and a reconciliation that residents and families can see. Personal money stays personal, under the resident’s control to the greatest extent possible.

The food question deserves its own paragraph because it is where the largest sums move with the least documentation. In a pooled food arrangement, several residents contribute a fixed amount each fortnight and the house shops from it. Done well, it is efficient. Done badly, nobody knows what was spent, receipts are not kept, and residents with smaller appetites or different dietary requirements subsidise others without ever knowing. Ask how it is reconciled, how often residents see the figures, and what happens to a surplus. What you actually pay to live in a supported house in Sydney goes through the whole cost picture.

What you are entitled to see

If you are the resident, or the person with legal authority for their finances, you are entitled to an account of money handled on their behalf. Specifically:

A provider that produces these without friction is a provider for whom this is routine. One that produces a single figure and a reassurance is one where nobody is checking, which is a different problem from dishonesty and has similar consequences.

The warning signs worth knowing

Financial abuse in supported living is usually gradual and usually explicable at each step. The patterns that should prompt a closer look:

The resident never has cash or a card. Ask why, and ask on what legal basis.

Balances that do not move the way spending suggests. Somebody who reportedly goes out twice a week and whose account shows almost no discretionary spending is either not going out or not paying for it themselves.

Transactions nobody can explain. Not one — a pattern of them.

Purchases that benefit the household rather than the resident. A new television in the lounge room bought from one resident’s account.

Resistance to producing records. The single most reliable signal, because the records either exist or they do not.

Staff with access to accounts, or named on them. Should not happen.

The resident’s name on contracts they do not use. Phone plans, finance agreements, subscriptions. This is one of the most damaging forms because it creates debt rather than just loss.

Gifts and loans to staff. Even where genuinely offered, a provider’s policy should prohibit staff accepting them, precisely because the offer cannot be independently verified.

Pressure around a will or an inheritance. Rare and serious.

Financial abuse is reportable. The NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission recorded 9,753 reportable incidents across the sector in the fourth quarter of 2025–26, including 2,624 involving neglect and 1,734 involving abuse, and has issued 111 banning orders, 225 registration revocations and 396 compliance notices through its enforcement activity. The Commission takes financial exploitation seriously, and a provider should be telling residents and families about that external route rather than treating complaints as internal matters.

Why this is structurally difficult

Three features of supported living combine badly.

The resident often cannot independently verify anything. If checking a bank balance requires the help of the person who spent the money, there is no check.

Visibility depends on somebody dropping in. Which is a function of distance, as discussed in where Sydney’s supported houses actually are. A family ninety minutes away sees a prepared house on scheduled visits.

Turnover breaks the audit trail. Sector turnover runs around 26% a year among casual disability support workers and 16% among permanent staff, with roughly 55% of leavers moving to another role in the sector. The worker who knows what happened to the $200 in March has left by September.

None of that means a provider is doing anything wrong. It means the safeguards have to be built in deliberately, because the environment does not supply them.

What to set up

1. Establish the legal basis, in writing. Enduring power of attorney, financial management order, or the resident managing their own money with support. Pick one and document it.
2. Keep the resident’s card with the resident wherever possible, with support to use it rather than substitution for using it.
3. Set up independent visibility. Online banking access or statements going to a family member or financial manager who is not the provider. This single step prevents most of what goes wrong.
4. Use a second account for discretionary spending, topped up to a set amount each fortnight, so exposure is capped even if something goes wrong.
5. Agree a receipt rule and write it into the support plan. Every transaction a worker is involved in gets a receipt, on the day, in a named place.
6. Ask for the household reconciliation quarterly. Not because you expect a problem, but because asking regularly makes it routine and makes an absence visible early.
7. Check the resident’s credit file annually. Free, straightforward, and the only way to find contracts in somebody’s name that they never agreed to.
8. Put the provider’s policy on gifts and staff purchasing in the file. If there is no policy, that is the finding.
9. Review it when the household changes. New residents, new staff, a new house manager. Each is a point at which informal practice resets.

The question to ask on the first tour

Before anyone signs anything: how is a resident’s personal money handled here, who has access to it, what records are kept, and who outside the organisation can see them?

A provider with a clear answer has thought about it. A provider who says it depends on the family has not, and the consequence of that falls on whichever resident has no family asking.

The companion question belongs in the paperwork: what the service agreement says about money, fees and the household contribution, which is covered in reading a SIL service agreement.

If you want to go through how a particular house handles this, including one that is not ours, we are happy to do it. Supported independent living in Sydney sets out what we are registered for and the records we put in front of people.