Have Your Say on the Future of SIL

What is being asked, and by when

The Department of Health, Disability and Ageing has opened a consultation on the future of Supported Independent Living, and it closes at 11.59pm AEST on 13 September 2026. If you live in a SIL home, have a family member in one, or are waiting for a place, this is the one open consultation that is about your house rather than the scheme in general.

The notice was published on 12 August 2026 at health.gov.au, and submissions go through the department's consultation hub. The department says it wants to hear from people with disability, families, carers, advocates, providers and support workers, which is a wider list than these consultations usually name.

The word to pay attention to is commissioning

Two things are being asked. The first is soft: what does a good SIL service actually look like. The second is not soft at all. The department is exploring whether a commissioning approach could improve the quality, safety, innovation and sustainability of these services for some participants.

Commissioning, in the department's own words, means government may take a more active role in how some services are planned, funded, delivered and monitored. Today SIL runs as a market. A participant with SIL funding in their plan chooses a provider, and providers decide where to open homes and who to take. Under a commissioning model, some of those decisions would move to government: which homes exist, in which areas, run by whom, against what standards.

That is a genuine fork in the road for the part of the scheme AllCare works in every day. It could mean more consistency and a floor under quality. It could also mean less choice about who supports you, and that is exactly the tension the department is asking people to comment on. No decisions have been made, and the notice says so plainly.

What is worth saying if you write in

Consultations reward specifics. A submission that says quality matters gets read once. A submission that says what happened in your house, in what month, and what would have prevented it, gets quoted.

Things people in SIL homes tend to have first-hand evidence about: how housemates were matched and whether anyone asked you first, what happened when a provider changed and whether your tenancy was at risk, how staff turnover affected your routine, what the roster looked like on paper against what turned up, and how easy it was to raise a problem without worrying about your housing.

If you are the family member rather than the participant, say which you are. The department has asked for both, and the two perspectives answer different questions. Our article on who pays for what in SIL may help you separate the housing question from the support question before you write, because a submission that mixes them is easier to set aside.

What this does not change today

Nothing about your current plan, your current home or your current provider changes because a consultation is open. This is the stage before options, which is the stage before rules. Any real change to how SIL is funded or commissioned would come later and would be announced separately.

We will write up whatever the department publishes out of this. In the meantime, if you are comparing homes now rather than in a year, our accommodation pages set out how our SIL homes are run and where they are.