What a SIL Roster of Care Actually Looks Like

It is a timetable, and it is also the price

A roster of care is a table covering one typical week in a supported home. It shows, hour by hour, which supports each resident receives, how many workers are on at that time, what kind of worker they are, and what the arrangement is overnight. It is a staffing plan and a quote at the same time, because the NDIA prices Supported Independent Living from it.

That double job is the thing most families are never told. When a provider proposes SIL, the roster of care is the document that goes to the NDIA. The agency reads the hours and the ratios in it, applies the rates in the NDIS Pricing Arrangements and Price Limits, and the figure that lands in the plan as stated SIL funding comes out of that arithmetic. If the roster says something different from what actually happens in the house, the funding will be wrong in one direction or the other.

The four things every line on a roster tells you

Read any line across and you get four pieces of information. The time band: a weekday morning, a Saturday afternoon, a Tuesday night. The ratio: 1:1 means a worker with one person, 1:3 means one worker across three residents at once. The worker type: standard disability support, or a higher classification where the support needs it. And the duration, which is where shifts either add up sensibly or quietly do not.

Ratios are where shared living actually saves money, and where it can also be stretched too thin. Breakfast in a three-person home is often shared, one worker moving between three people who all need prompting rather than hands-on help. A shower for someone who needs two workers to transfer safely is 2:1 and cannot be shared with anything. A good roster is honest about which is which, rather than averaging everyone into a comfortable middle.

The worker type matters more than it looks. A shift that involves a support the NDIS Commission treats as high intensity has to be staffed by someone signed off for that task, and a home that has one resident with that need cannot roster whoever is free. We wrote about that in more detail in what high intensity supports actually are.

What happens between 10pm and 6am is its own question

Overnight is the part of the roster families read last and should read first. There are two shapes it can take. An active night means a worker is awake and working the whole time, because someone needs repositioning, seizure monitoring, continence support or reassurance at unpredictable hours. A sleepover means a worker sleeps in the house and is there to assist if needed, with a limited amount of assistance built into the arrangement before the shift converts to active support.

Those two are priced very differently, which is exactly why the choice has to be made on evidence rather than on what is cheaper to quote. If the reality is that someone is up three times most nights, a sleepover roster will not hold, and the provider will either be running unfunded active hours or the support will not be delivered. If the reality is that someone sleeps through and occasionally needs help to the bathroom, an active night is funding somebody to sit awake for nothing.

In a shared home the overnight line is usually one worker for the whole house, which is why the sleeping arrangements of one resident affect everybody. The full comparison sits in active and passive overnight support.

What is in the roster and what is deliberately not

A roster of care covers the support hours in the home. It does not cover rent, food, electricity, internet or the person's own bills, and it does not cover the supports that belong in other parts of the plan, such as therapy, community access with a worker outside the house, or transport to a day program. Those are separate line items in separate budgets, and a provider who folds them into the SIL quote is doing something the NDIA will unpick. The split is set out in who pays for what in a SIL home.

It also does not cover the irregular week. Rosters are written for a typical week, so a fortnight with a hospital admission, a family holiday or a housemate moving out is not in the document. Providers manage that variation inside the funded envelope, which is one of the reasons the roster is reviewed rather than set once.

Reading the roster you have been handed

Ask for the roster in writing before you agree to anything. A provider proposing SIL should be able to hand it over, and reluctance to do that is information in itself. Then check five things against the person you actually know.

• Add up the 1:1 hours across the week. Are the personal care times right, or has a 45 minute morning routine been written as 20 minutes?
• Look at the shared ratios at the busy times. Is one worker really covering three people at 7am on a weekday?
• Find the overnight line and check it matches how the nights genuinely go, not how they went during a good month.
• Look for the gaps. Is there an hour in the afternoon with nobody rostered, and is that safe?
• Check what is assumed about family. Rosters sometimes quietly assume a parent does the Sunday visit and the medication prompt, which works until it does not.

If something looks wrong, say so before the quote is submitted. Changing a roster after the plan is approved means a plan variation and a wait, whereas changing a draft means an email. The other reason to read it early is that the roster tells you what daily life will feel like more accurately than any brochure does. Hours on a page are the actual texture of the week.

It gets reviewed, and it should

SIL funding is a stated support, so it sits in the plan as a fixed amount for the specific home and cannot be moved to something else. That makes the accuracy of the roster more important than for flexible funding, not less, because there is no quiet room to absorb a mistake.

Support needs change. Someone builds skills and needs less prompting at breakfast. Someone else has a fall and needs two workers for transfers. A housemate moves out and the shared ratios stop working. Any of those is a reason to revisit the roster, and a reason to be gathering evidence now rather than the week before a reassessment. If you want to see how homes are staffed in practice, our Sydney supported living vacancies list the current arrangements home by home.

Frequently asked questions

What is a roster of care in SIL?

It is a table setting out one typical week of support in a shared home: which supports each resident gets, at what times, at what staffing ratio, with which worker type, and what the overnight arrangement is. The provider prepares it, and the NDIA uses it to work out the stated SIL amount in the participant's plan.

Who writes the roster of care, the provider or the NDIA?

The provider writes it, usually with input from the participant, the family and any support coordinator or allied health professional involved. It goes to the NDIA with the SIL quote. The NDIA assesses whether the hours and ratios are reasonable and necessary and can approve, reduce or query them before funding is set.

Can I see the roster of care for my own supports?

Yes. Ask the provider for a copy in writing before you sign a service agreement, and ask again if the supports change. It describes how your week will be staffed, so there is no good reason for it to be withheld. Reading it early is also the cheapest time to correct anything that does not match reality.

Does the roster of care include rent and food?

No. A roster of care prices support hours only. Rent, food, utilities, phone and internet are ordinary living costs the participant pays from their own income, usually the Disability Support Pension. Therapy, transport and community access outside the home also sit in different parts of the plan rather than in the SIL amount.

What happens if the roster does not match what actually happens?

Raise it with the provider in writing and ask for it to be reviewed. Persistent mismatch is worth documenting with dates and examples, because that record is what supports a change at the next plan reassessment. If nights are the issue, a diary of what actually happened each night is more persuasive than a general description.