How Many Hours of Support Do You Get in SIL?

There is no standard number

SIL is not funded in hours you can look up. It is funded through a roster of care: a week-long plan showing who needs help, when, and how many workers are on at each point. The NDIA prices that roster and funds it. Two people with the same diagnosis living two streets apart can end up with very different amounts of support, and both can be correct.

So when someone asks how many hours they will get, the useful answer is a question back: what does your week actually require, and how much of that can be shared with the people you live with? Those two things drive almost everything.

How a roster of care is built

It starts with the day, not the total. Someone maps out a typical 24 hours: what happens at 6am, who needs help to shower, whether medication needs prompting or administering, who cannot be left alone at any point, what evenings look like, and what happens at 2am if someone wakes.

Then the week gets layered on, because weeks are not seven identical days. Appointments, a day programme two days out of five, a family visit on Sundays, the shopping trip that always takes two hours. Support that only appears on Tuesdays still has to be funded on Tuesdays.

The provider proposes that roster, the NDIA assesses it, and what comes back is a funded amount rather than a timetable you can hold them to hour by hour. This is why the roster document itself is worth reading closely before you agree to it. It is the closest thing to a contract about your actual day.

The ratio matters more than the hours

This is the part most families work out too late. Support in a shared home is usually delivered to more than one person at once, and the funding assumes that. A worker helping three residents get ready in the morning is one worker, not three.

In practice a home might run shared support for most of the day, with one-to-one time carved out for the parts that genuinely cannot be shared: personal care, a medical routine, an outing that only one person is going on. Higher support needs pull the ratio toward one-to-one, and sometimes beyond it, where two workers are needed for a single task such as a transfer.

The reason to care is simple. Twelve hours of shared support and twelve hours of one-to-one support are the same number on a page and completely different experiences of a day. Ask any provider to tell you the ratio at each part of the day, not just the total.

Nights are funded two different ways

Overnight support splits into two shapes, and knowing which one applies to you changes what your nights look like. A sleepover means a worker is in the house, asleep, available if something happens. An active night means someone is awake and working, because there is a reason to be: regular repositioning, seizure monitoring, someone who reliably wakes and needs help.

They are priced differently and they are evidenced differently. Active nights need a real record of what happens at night, which is why sleep charts and incident notes matter far more than a general statement that someone sleeps badly. If your nights are the reason you need supported living at all, that evidence is the centrepiece of the whole request.

Why your housemate might get more than you

Because the funding follows the person, not the address. Each resident has their own plan, their own assessed needs, and their own share of the shared support. Someone in the same house can have overnight active support funded while you have none, and neither figure says anything about how much you matter.

What it does affect is the household. A home where one person's needs are much heavier than everyone else's runs differently, and it is a fair thing to ask about on a visit. How the shared time gets divided in practice is one of the questions worth putting to current residents rather than management.

What to check before you sign

Ask for the roster of care in writing and read it against a real week, including the awkward parts: the 4pm slump, Sunday, the fortnight when a housemate is away and the shared ratio changes. Ask what happens to your support when that housemate is in hospital, because the funded ratio assumed they were home.

Ask how the provider handles a shift nobody can fill. Every provider has occasional gaps, and the difference between services is whether they tell you or quietly absorb it.

Then check the money side is separate from the support side. Support hours are funded by your plan; rent, board and groceries are not, and we set out that split in detail in who pays for what in SIL. Pricing for support items is published by the NDIA in the NDIS Pricing Arrangements and Price Limits, and any provider should be able to point to the line item behind a number they have given you.

If you are comparing homes rather than reading one agreement, our current vacancies list what each house offers, and the honest answer about hours only ever comes from sitting in the place and asking.

Frequently asked questions

Is SIL always 24 hour support?

No. Some SIL homes have staff present around the clock, others have support at set times of day with no overnight worker. What you get depends on your assessed needs and the roster of care funded for your household, not on the label SIL. Ask directly whether a home is staffed overnight, and whether that worker is awake or asleep.

What is a roster of care?

It is a week-by-week map of the support in a home: who needs help, at what times, and how many workers are on. Your provider prepares it and the NDIA assesses and prices it. It is the document that determines your funded support, so it is worth reading line by line before you agree to it.

Do my SIL hours change if a housemate moves out?

They can, because shared support assumes a certain number of people in the house. When someone leaves, the ratio behind the roster shifts and the provider usually needs to revisit it with the NDIA. Ask any provider how they manage that gap, since it can take time to fill a vacancy.

Can I get one-to-one support in a shared home?

Yes, for the parts of the day that genuinely cannot be shared, such as personal care or an outing you are going on alone. It is normal for a roster to mix shared and one-to-one support across the same day. Ask for the ratio at each part of the day rather than a single total.