SIL Handbook Part 7: When the Home Has to Change

Where this chapter picks up

Part 6 was about who decides what inside a settled home. This chapter is about the moment the arrangement itself has to change: a different provider in the same house, a different house, or a return to a family home while something is sorted out.

It happens more often than the sector likes to admit, and usually for undramatic reasons. Needs change and the house no longer suits them. A housemate moves and the mix does not work. Someone gets a job on the other side of Sydney. A house is sold. A person simply wants to live somewhere else, which is a complete reason on its own.

This chapter is the mechanics, in the order they actually need doing. It is not about grievances, and it is not about whether to leave. It is about how to leave well, with the tenancy, the funding and the records intact.

First, separate the three things that are tangled together

Almost every difficulty in a SIL move comes from treating one decision as three, or three as one. There are three separate arrangements sitting on top of each other:

Where you live is a tenancy or occupancy agreement, with the landlord or SDA provider. Who supports you is a SIL service agreement, with the support provider. What funds it is your NDIS plan, held with the NDIA.

In some homes all three involve different organisations. In some, the landlord and the support provider are related, which is exactly why our piece on the shapes supported living can take and the separation of housing from support matters more than it sounds.

Write down which is which for your situation before doing anything else, because it decides the order of operations. Changing support provider while staying put is a very different exercise from moving house, and the two get conflated constantly.

Notice periods: what is actually in the agreements

Two clocks run, and they are usually different lengths.

The service agreement with the support provider has a notice period written into it, commonly two to four weeks, sometimes longer for SIL because rosters and staffing have to be rebuilt. Find the clause and read it before you tell anybody anything. Note whether notice has to be in writing, and to whom.

The tenancy or occupancy agreement has its own notice period, set by the agreement and by NSW residential tenancy law where it applies. It is not affected by the service agreement at all. This is the one people forget, and it is the one that costs money.

The practical consequence: you can give notice to a support provider and keep the house, or give notice on the house and keep the support provider, or both. Deciding which of those you are doing, in writing, on a specific date, is the whole job.

One thing to be clear about with the provider: giving notice on support does not require you to be out by the same date, and a provider should not present it that way. If the two dates need to differ, say so in the notice itself.

What happens to the SIL funding

SIL funding sits in your plan, not with the provider. It does not belong to the house and it does not disappear when the service agreement ends.

What does change is the claiming. Once the service agreement ends, the outgoing provider stops claiming against it and the incoming provider starts. In PACE this means the service booking or endorsement needs updating, and a gap between the two is the most common cause of a new provider not being able to claim for the first fortnight.

Two things reduce that risk. Give the NDIA and your plan manager or support coordinator the change of dates in writing, and get the incoming provider set up before the outgoing agreement ends rather than after. An overlap of a few days is much easier to unwind than a gap.

If the move changes the support itself, that is a separate matter from the change of provider. Moving from a house with three residents to one with two, or from shared overnight cover to your own arrangement, alters the roster of care and may need a plan variation with evidence behind it. That is the ground covered in what happens to SIL funding at reassessment, and the honest position is that funding decisions sit with the NDIA and turn on the evidence.

Do not stop existing supports on the assumption the new arrangement will be funded at the same level. Keep the current one running until the new one is confirmed.

The records to take with you

This is the part that gets skipped in the rush and regretted six months later. Ask for these in writing, before the last day, while somebody still has a reason to answer email.

• The current roster of care, and the support plan the house has been working to.
• Behaviour support plan, if there is one, and the practitioner's contact details.
• Medication charts and the current list, plus the pharmacy arrangement.
• Health documents held by the house: care plans, mealtime management plans, any allied health reports the provider commissioned.
• Incident records relating to you, and any restrictive practice authorisations in place.
• Service records for the period, which is the raw material for any future evidence file.
• Contact details for the workers who know the person best, where they consent to that.

You are entitled to your own records, and a provider should hand them over without a fight. If the request meets resistance, put it in writing, name the documents, and give a date.

The other thing worth capturing is not in any file: the working knowledge. How a person likes to be woken. Which supermarket aisle causes trouble. What the first sign of a bad day looks like. Ask the outgoing team to write half a page of it. Rebuilding that from scratch takes a new team months, and it is the single biggest determinant of how the first fortnight goes.

Handover between providers

A good handover is a meeting, not an email. Get both providers, the participant, and whoever is coordinating in the same room or on the same call, with the roster of care open in front of everybody.

Agree the exact change-over date and time, not just the date. A midnight handover on a Sunday night is neat administratively and awful practically. Handing over mid-morning on a weekday, with an outgoing worker present for the first shift, is worth the small extra cost.

Overlap the first overnight if you possibly can. Nights are where a new team is most exposed, because the person is asleep, the house is quiet, and nobody is there to ask.

Set a two-week check-in at the handover meeting rather than leaving it open. What the new arrangement looks like after 90 days is covered in Part 4 of this handbook, and the pattern holds whether it is a first move or a fifth.

If the move is prompted by something serious about safety or the quality of support, the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission is the body that handles it and can be contacted directly. That is a separate track from the move itself, and it should not delay getting somebody settled somewhere they want to be.

A short order of operations

Read both agreements and identify the two notice periods. Decide which arrangements are actually changing. Talk to the support coordinator or plan manager before giving notice, so the funding side moves in step. Line up the incoming arrangement, at least in principle. Give written notice with the dates you have chosen. Request the records list above. Hold the handover meeting. Overlap the first shift and the first night. Check in at two weeks.

Nine steps, and the first three are the ones that decide how the rest goes. Part 8 picks up the other side of a change: how families stay involved without taking over.

If you are at the earlier stage of comparing homes rather than leaving one, Part 3 on finding and touring homes is the chapter to go back to.