The new SIL Practice Standards — final, in force 1 July 2026
The SIL Practice Standards are no longer a draft. The final instruments were made on 24 June 2026 and are in force from 1 July 2026 — the same day SIL registration became mandatory. Here's what the standards require, in plain English, and which documents evidence each one.
Final and in force — what changed on 24 June 2026
Through late 2025 and the first half of 2026, the SIL Practice Standards existed only in consultation drafts, and every sensible provider (and product, including ours) carried a "still in draft — check the final version" caveat. That caveat is now retired: the final rules were registered on the Federal Register of Legislation as F2026L00802 on 24 June 2026 and commenced on 1 July 2026. The NDIS Commission assesses SIL providers against them from that date.
We refer to the standards by their outcome areas rather than clause numbers — read the instrument itself for exact clause text, and treat the Commission as authoritative.
The four outcome areas
The SIL Practice Standards centre on four outcome areas, each aimed at a well-documented failure mode in shared living:
- Supported decision-making. Participants direct their own lives. Workers support decisions rather than make them; communication is adapted to each person; consent is real, informed and recorded.
- Safeguarding. Providers actively protect participants from harm, abuse, neglect and exploitation — per-participant risk work, functioning incident management, and honest use of the reportable incidents regime.
- Practice governance. Someone is demonstrably responsible for the quality and safety of practice: worker competency, supervision, document control, complaints, continuous improvement.
- Tenancy/housing & support agreements. Where a provider supplies both the home and the support, the two must be separate agreements that are not contingent on each other — a participant can change SIL provider without losing their home.
How they sit with the Core Module
The SIL Practice Standards add to the NDIS Practice Standards Core Module — they don't replace it. A SIL certification audit assesses both:
| Layer | Covers | Applies to |
|---|---|---|
| Core Module | Rights & responsibilities, governance & operational management, provision of supports, support environment — incident, complaints, risk, HR, emergency, infection control, medication | All certification-level providers |
| SIL Practice Standards | The four SIL outcome areas above, applied to shared/supported living | Providers registered for SIL (group 0138) |
Practically, that means your Core Module policy set is necessary but not sufficient — a provider with excellent incident management but a combined tenancy-and-support agreement will still hit a non-conformity. See the audit checklist guide for how auditors walk both layers.
Standards → documents mapping
Auditors trace each outcome area to evidence. This is the mapping we build the SILReady pack around (document names are the actual pack documents):
| Outcome area | What the auditor looks for | Documents that evidence it |
|---|---|---|
| Supported decision-making | Evidence that participants make (and are supported to make) their own decisions — communication tailored to each person, decisions recorded, no substitute decision-making by default. |
|
| Safeguarding | Proactive protection from harm, abuse, neglect and exploitation — risk identified per participant, incidents managed and reported, restrictive practices authorised and tracked. |
|
| Practice governance | An organisation that oversees the quality and safety of its own SIL practice — clear accountabilities, trained and competent workers, documents reviewed and versioned, complaints feeding improvement. |
|
| Tenancy/housing & support agreements | The participant’s home is not hostage to their support: tenancy/occupancy and support are separate agreements, not contingent on each other, and each is explained in a way the participant understands. |
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The Core Module documents (the other policies and registers) sit underneath all four areas — incident management, for example, is Core Module machinery that the safeguarding outcome area relies on.
Already registered? What to update
Existing 0115 providers are being varied onto group 0138 automatically, but the standards still change your document set. The documents most commonly created or revised for the 2026 standards: a Supported Decision-Making Policy, Safeguarding Policy, Practice Governance Policy, a Worker Training & Competency Framework, per-home vision/values statements, a Restrictive Practices Register, and — the big one — splitting combined agreements into a SIL Service Agreement plus a separate Tenancy/Occupancy Agreement (with an Easy Read explainer). Check each against how your service actually runs before your next audit cycle.
Which of these documents are you missing?
The free quiz maps your SIL service to the full document list — Core Module plus all four SIL outcome areas — in about two minutes.
Take the free quizWritten by the Clarova regulatory team · Reviewed 2 July 2026 · Sources: NDIS Commission, legislation.gov.au (F2026L00802)
SILReady is built by Clarova, an Australian company. This page is general information, not legal or registration advice — the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission is the authoritative source for registration requirements.