NDIS roster of care: template structure and guide

What is a roster of care?

A roster of care is a structured picture of a typical week of support in a SIL home: every participant in the dwelling, the support running in each block of the day and night, the staff-to-participant ratio in each block, and the type of overnight support. It is not your operational staff roster (who works Tuesday) — it's the costing model the NDIA uses to understand what SIL funding a participant needs, and the reference document your actual rosters and shift notes should be consistent with.

Because SIL is usually shared support, the RoC does something no other NDIS document does: it shows how support is apportioned across housemates. A 1:3 daytime ratio means each participant's plan carries roughly a third of that worker's time. Get the apportionment wrong and someone's plan is either overfunded (audit and payment-integrity risk) or underfunded (your revenue gap).

When does the NDIA request a roster of care?

The NDIA (not the Commission — this is a funding document, not a registration one) typically asks for a RoC when:

• a participant is entering SIL for the first time and their plan needs a SIL funding decision;
• a plan reassessment is underway and SIL funding is being re-costed;
• the house composition changes — a participant moves in or out, which changes everyone's apportionment, not just the mover's;
• support needs change materially — e.g. a participant now needs an active overnight instead of a sleepover; or
• the NDIA is checking claims against what was funded — where consistency between RoC, actual rosters and claims becomes evidence.

The practical implication: don't build the RoC when it's requested. Keep a current one per home, dated and versioned, and update it whenever the house or the support model changes. (Registration-side auditors also read it — they cross-check ratios in your service agreements against it.)

What does each line of the roster mean?

The grid is usually built as a 7-day week where each cell answers: how many workers, supporting how many participants, doing what kind of support? Split a block whenever the answer changes — a day that runs 1:3 from 6am but 1:1 for one participant's community access from 9–11am is two lines, not one.

Sleepover vs active night: why the split matters

Overnight support is where most rosters go wrong, because the two overnight models are priced on different logic:

• Sleepover: the worker sleeps at the home and is available if needed. Priced as a flat overnight allowance, plus payment for the hours actually worked if they're woken to provide support.
• Active night: the worker is awake and working the whole shift. Priced as ordinary (night-rate) support hours — several times the cost of a sleepover.

The RoC must say which model applies each night, and for whom. If one participant needs active overnight support and two housemates only need someone in the house, the roster should show an active night apportioned accordingly — not three sleepovers, and not an active night split evenly as if all three drove the need. This is both a funding-accuracy issue and a safeguarding one: the overnight model should trace back to assessed need, and your night-shift shift notes should reflect what actually happens at 2am.

How do you reconcile the roster to plan funding?

A RoC that doesn't reconcile is just a spreadsheet. The reconciliation loop:

1. Total the typical week per participant: shared hours ÷ ratio + 1:1 hours + overnight allocation, by day type (weekday / Saturday / Sunday / public holiday).
2. Price it against the current NDIS pricing arrangements for each support type and day type.
3. Annualise (the NDIA works from the typical week, adjusted for public holidays) and compare to the SIL funding in each participant's plan.
4. Investigate gaps in either direction. Delivering more than is funded is a sustainability problem you need to raise at reassessment; claiming more than the roster supports is a payment-integrity problem.
5. Re-run the loop on every change — house composition, ratios, overnight model, or annual price updates.

What are the most common roster of care errors?

• Sleepovers costed as active nights (or vice versa) — the single most expensive line to get wrong.
• Apportionment that ignores a housemate — including vacancies and non-NDIS residents — so everyone's share is inflated.
• 1:1 hours buried inside shared blocks, so one participant's individual support is silently spread across the house.
• The "typical week" that never existed — a roster drawn for funding that doesn't match the real staff roster or shift records. Cross-checking these is exactly what reviews look for.
• No version history — the house changed in March, the roster still says last October, and nobody can show which version a claim was based on.
• Roster contradicts the service agreement — the agreement promises 1:2; the roster funds 1:3. Auditors read both. See what belongs in the agreement.

Not sure your wider document set is ready for the 2026 rules? The free quiz maps your service to every required document, and the audit checklist shows how auditors will test them.