SIL roster of care, explained

What is a roster of care?

Take a house with three residents. On a weekday morning one worker helps all three get up and out — that's a 1:3 ratio for two hours. In the afternoon two workers are on because one resident has an appointment — 1:1 for her, 1:2 for the other two. Overnight, one worker sleeps at the house and is paid a sleepover, or stays awake and is paid awake overnight hours.

Write that down for all seven days and you have a roster of care. The NDIA's template adds up the hours in each band — weekday day, evening, night, Saturday, Sunday, public holiday — splits them by the ratio, prices them at the published limits, and gives a weekly figure per resident.

It matters because SIL is funded per person but delivered to a house. The roster is how everyone sees the sharing: a resident who needs 1:1 for two hours a day costs more than one who is happy in the group, and the roster shows why. It's also what a provider quotes from, and what a coordinator checks a quote against.

Where is the NDIA's roster of care template?

On the NDIS website, on the provider page "Guide to providing supported independent living (opens in new tab)", under "Establish a roster of care, if you want to". It's an Excel workbook — the Provider SIL Roster of Care Tool — with a guide to filling it in, both updated for the 2026-27 prices.

We don't copy or redistribute the workbook — it's the NDIA's. Our tool reads your own copy and fills it in, so what you send is the NDIA's sheet with your roster in it.

Do I have to submit one?

Not as a routine. The NDIA's current guidance is that a roster of care isn't a requirement and you don't need to send it in for an existing arrangement — SIL is funded per participant on their support needs, and the roster is how the provider and the residents agree what will be delivered and claimed.

Where it does matter is a funding request. If a participant is asking for SIL for the first time, or for a change in their SIL funding at a reassessment, the NDIA takes the proposed roster into account alongside the other evidence. In practice the provider builds it, the participant or nominee is consulted, and the Support Coordinator includes it with the home-and-living request. It is a proposal for assessment, not a contract: the actual supports and how they're claimed are settled in the service agreement once the plan is approved.

If you're a coordinator putting a participant forward for a vacancy, you will usually be asked for the participant's support pattern, not a full roster — the provider builds the roster from that.

Am I eligible for SIL?

That is the NDIA's decision, not a provider's, and it rests on the participant's support needs, their plan and their home-and-living goals. The NDIA's operational guideline on Supported Independent Living sets out how it decides. What a roster can do is show what a support pattern costs, so the conversation with the planner is about real numbers.

How much does SIL cost?

It depends on four things: the ratio, how much of the day is 1:1, what happens overnight, and how much falls on weekends and public holidays. For standard-intensity support at the national price limits, the 2026-27 rates run from $73.58 an hour on a weekday daytime to $163.46 an hour on a public holiday, and a sleepover is $311.79 a night — before sharing. High-intensity support and remote areas have higher limits. These are the maximums a provider can claim, not what every provider charges.

Two rosters that look similar can be far apart. A house where everyone shares support 1:3 through the day, with a sleepover, is a different number from one where a resident needs 1:1 from 7am to 10pm and an awake worker overnight. The only honest answer is to build the roster and price it.

Try it the other way round: put in the funding a plan has for SIL and the tool shows how many awake hours a day that buys, at what ratio, with what overnight. That is the question a coordinator usually has.

Open the roster tool

And then the plan. A roster tells you what the support costs. Whether the plan can carry it for the whole plan period is a different question — put the funding and the planned supports into the plan budget planner and it shows when the money runs out, and what one change would do.

How to fill out the NDIA roster of care spreadsheet

The NDIA's workbook has four parts, and its guide walks through them in this order:

1. Provider details — provider name, ABN and registration number, and the house address.
2. Residents — one column per person living in the house, up to six. Which residents receive SIL, and which have standard or high-intensity support needs.
3. The roster — for each day of the week, the shifts: start and finish, how many workers are on, and how many residents they support in that shift. Overnight is a sleepover, awake overnight support, or nothing. This is the part that takes the time, and where most mistakes live: a shift that starts before 8pm, a sleepover that's really awake overnight support, a ratio that assumes a resident is home when they're at a day program.
4. Weekly support summary — the workbook does this itself. It adds up the hours in each band, divides them by the ratio, prices them at the limits, and gives a weekly and annual figure per resident.

The sheet works, but it is slow to change. Move one shift by an hour and you're re-checking every band it touched.

The shortcut. Our roster tool does step 3 on screen — add the shifts, set the staffing, pick the overnight — and shows the weekly summary as you go. When it's right, bring your own copy of the NDIA workbook and the tool fills it in: the house, the residents and every half-hour of the roster land in the NDIA's own cells, and the sheet works out the summary itself when you open it in Excel. We don't host or hand out the workbook; you get it from the NDIS site and keep it. Three steps:

1. Build the roster in the tool and check the weekly figure.
2. Download the NDIA's workbook from the NDIS page linked above.
3. Drop it into the tool and download it back, filled in.

Open the roster tool

Things to check before you rely on a roster

• Whose rates. 2026-27 limits apply from 1 July 2026. A roster built on last year's sheet will be wrong by a few percent everywhere.
• Public holidays. The NDIA workbook annualises public-holiday costs across the year — that's its costing method, not how a public-holiday shift is billed. A roster for a specific week with a public holiday in it will cost more that week.
• Overnight. A sleepover includes up to two hours of active support overnight. If more is needed, the extra hours are claimed on top — at the Saturday rate on weekdays, and at the applicable rate on weekends and public holidays. If the worker needs to stay awake all night, that's awake overnight support, priced by the hour — a different line on the roster.
• Shared support is a choice. 1:2 means two residents share one worker. It only works if both residents are happy with it and it's safe.
• A roster is not a quote. The provider quotes on the roster; the NDIA decides what it funds. The numbers here are price limits, not what a plan will pay.

Related. Not SIL, but a short stay away from home? The respite and STA cost tool prices a stay by the dates. Referring someone to a SIL vacancy? See current vacancies.

Prices from the NDIS Pricing Arrangements and Price Limits 2026-27, national, GST inclusive. This page is general information, not advice about any participant's plan.