1. Why These Standards Exist — The Reform Context
The new SIL Practice Standards do not appear from nowhere. They are a direct regulatory response to three years of damning findings from major national reviews. Understanding that context explains both why the standards exist and why the NDIS Commission intends to enforce them vigorously.
1.1 The regulatory response
The government’s response — mandatory registration, a new registration group (0138), and four SIL-specific Practice Standards — is explicitly designed to close those gaps. The Minister’s announcement in December 2025 was unambiguous: providers who cannot meet the standards should not be providing SIL. The enforcement toolkit under the 2026 Act — which includes civil penalties, banning orders, deregistration, and imprisonment — signals the Commission intends to back that position.
The Commission’s enforcement data from 2025–26 already shows a 214% year-on-year increase in actions related to behaviour support and restrictive practices in SIL settings. The new standards will add four further audit domains against which providers can face compliance notices, conditions or deregistration.
2. Mandatory Registration — What It Means and Who It Affects
2.1 The new registration landscape
From 1 July 2026, a new registration group — 0138 Assistance with Supported Independent Living — comes into effect. All providers delivering supports that are defined as SIL under the NDIS Price Arrangements and Price Limits (PAPL) must be registered under this group. This is a Certification pathway registration, the highest-tier audit route in the NDIS framework.
Unlike a Verification audit (a desktop document review for lower-risk supports), Certification involves a two-stage process: Stage 1 is a documentation review; Stage 2 is an on-site audit against the NDIS Practice Standards.
Auditors interview workers and participants directly. A provider who has good policies but poor operational practice will not pass Stage 2. Registration takes 8–12 months end to end, and auditor capacity is under significant pressure as the mandatory cohort enters simultaneously — providers who have not already started are behind.
2.2 Transition pathways by provider type
The Commission has published differentiated transition pathways depending on a provider’s current status:
Already registered and delivering SIL (under registration group 0115)
Continue as usual. The Commission will vary your registration to add group 0138. You will be audited against the new SIL Standards at your next scheduled audit (mid-term or renewal). 1 July 2026 is not a re-registration date — it is the date the new Standards apply to you.
Already registered, not currently delivering SIL
No immediate action required. If you plan to deliver SIL in the future, you will need to add registration group 0138 before commencing. This requires a variation to your registration and a Certification audit against the SIL Standards.
Unregistered, currently delivering SIL
You must apply for registration by 1 October 2026 to continue delivering SIL. You can keep delivering during the transition period while your application is processed, but only if you have lodged the application. If you do not apply by 1 October, you must stop immediately.
New entrant, not yet delivering SIL
You cannot deliver SIL until you have successfully completed registration and a Certification audit. There is no provisional permission for new entrants. Plan for 8–12 months from application to registration decision.
3. The Four SIL Practice Standards Domains — In Detail
The new SIL Practice Standards comprise four outcome domains. These sit alongside — not instead of — the existing Core NDIS Practice Standards. At audit, providers are assessed against both sets. Each domain has expectation statements from three perspectives (participant, worker, provider) and specific quality indicators that auditors test directly. The pilot confirmed that auditors will seek evidence tied to individual participants on specific dates — not generic policy documents.
Details for each domain are covered in separate articles on this website, so you can investigate what the standard requires, what auditors will look for, and the common gaps for in-home providers. This is designed to assist you in identifying potential gaps in your audit readiness.
4. Specific Implications for In-Home Support Providers
The new SIL Standards are often discussed in the context of group homes and shared accommodation — the settings where the most serious failures were identified by the Disability Royal Commission and the Own Motion Inquiries. However, the standards apply equally to providers delivering SIL in individual homes. This section addresses the specific nuances for in-home providers.
4.1 SIL in an individual home — how it differs from group home compliance
Providers delivering SIL to a participant living alone face different practical compliance challenges than group home operators. The standards apply identically, but the evidence base looks different:
- Incident management in an individual home often relies on a single support worker per shift with no on-site colleague to consult. Incident reporting processes must be designed for solo workers who may feel isolated when raising concerns about a participant’s safety or their own conduct.
- Safeguarding risks in solo support are acute: without the oversight of a shared environment, coercive or exploitative practices by individual workers are harder to detect. Unannounced management check-ins, GPS-enabled rostering, and regular participant-facing check-ins are critical.
- Supported decision-making in an individual home is harder to evidence because there is no shared house meeting or structured housemate consultation process. Providers must demonstrate that individual participants are genuinely supported to make daily decisions, with communication strategies in place that reflect their specific needs.
- Practice governance for a small provider operating across a few individual homes requires the same governance maturity as a larger group home operator — but with fewer administrative resources. The Commission has acknowledged this, but has not reduced the standard.
4.2 The SIL vs ILO distinction — critical for in-home providers to get right
Not all in-home support is SIL. This distinction has become critical under mandatory registration because the obligations are fundamentally different:
Definition
- SIL: Supports defined as SIL line items under the NDIS PAPL — typically packaged, ongoing support for high-need participants in their home.
- ILO: A flexible, co-designed support arrangement for participants who want to live independently. May include informal/natural supports alongside paid supports.
Registration requirement
- SIL: Mandatory registration from 1 July 2026 (group 0138). Certification audit required.
- ILO: ILO itself does not require registration under group 0138. However, the supports delivered within an ILO arrangement may be funded under other registration groups.
Do the new Practice Standards apply?
- SIL: Yes — all four new SIL Standards apply.
- ILO: No — ILO is not SIL. Different obligations apply.
Shared or individual living
- SIL: Most commonly shared, but can be individual. Defined by the support type (SIL line items in the PAPL), not the living arrangement.
- ILO: Flexible — can be living with a host, shared, or individual. Co-designed around participant preferences.
Key risk for providers
- SIL: Treating in-home support as ILO to avoid mandatory registration when the support being delivered is actually SIL. This is a compliance risk — the NDIS Commission will assess the nature of the support delivered, not just what the provider calls it.
- ILO: Treating ILO as SIL — placing participants in more structured arrangements than their needs require, or reducing their flexibility and choice.
If your organisation delivers in-home supports that are funded under SIL PAPL line items, these supports are SIL regardless of how the arrangement is described or structured. Providers who reclassify SIL as ILO to avoid the mandatory registration requirements are exposed to enforcement action.
5. Specific Challenges for Small and Medium In-Home Providers
The pilot audit findings (February–March 2026, 12 registered SIL providers) identified that smaller providers face disproportionate compliance challenges in specific areas. Understanding these in advance allows for targeted preparation.
5.1 Practice Governance — the domain where small providers are most exposed
The Practice Governance domain requires governance maturity that typically takes organisations years to build. Many small in-home providers have grown organically without a corresponding investment in governance infrastructure. Common gaps include:
- Governance bodies that receive financial data but no participant safety or quality data
- Supervision that happens in practice but is not documented in a way an auditor can trace
- Training records that capture induction but not ongoing, role-specific competency development
- Quality meetings that address compliance tasks rather than using data to drive practice improvement
- Risk registers that were created for registration purposes and have not been actively used since
The Certification audit will expose all of these. Stage 2 (on-site) includes direct staff interviews and observation of practice. A provider who has not embedded governance into daily operation will not be able to evidence it retrospectively in an audit setting.
5.2 Workforce — the capability gap
The Commission’s Own Motion Inquiry was explicit: worker attitude and aptitude drives the majority of issues in SIL settings. The new Standards require providers to demonstrate worker capability — not just training completion. For in-home providers with small workforces:
- Workers may be highly experienced but without documented evidence of their competency against current SIL obligations
- Training in de-escalation, trauma-informed practice, and supported decision-making may have happened informally but is not captured in training records
- Workers in individual home settings are isolated — they need structured support to maintain practice quality without the natural peer accountability of a team environment
- Matching worker capability to specific participant support needs must now be documented, not just managed in practice by coordinators who know their teams
5.3 Auditor capacity pressure
Registration requires a Certification audit. With the entire previously unregistered SIL cohort entering the system simultaneously, auditor availability is under significant pressure. Providers who do not book an auditor now may face months of delay, which compresses the timeline between application and the 1 October 2026 application-lodgement deadline.
Contact an approved quality auditor now to book your Stage 1 and Stage 2 audit windows. Do not wait until your documentation is complete. Book the date and use it as a deadline to drive preparation. Auditor capacity tightens as August approaches.