If you deliver Supported Independent Living, two things changed on 1 July 2026. The first is administrative: a new registration group, 0138 — Assistance with Supported Independent Living, replaced the old arrangement under 0115. Existing registrations are varied across to the new group, and claims must use 0138 from that date.
The second change is the one that affects your audit. Alongside the Core Module you have always been assessed on, SIL providers now face a supplementary module of four additional practice standards. They are not a re-wording of what was already there. They ask about things — housemate conflict, tenancy and service agreements being legally separate, rehearsed emergency plans for each house — that plenty of well-run providers do every day but have never had to evidence.
Supported decision-making
The participant directs decisions about their own home, their routines and their relationships. Workers support that decision-making rather than making the decision on the person's behalf. The distinction sounds subtle and is not — it is the difference between "we asked her and she chose" and "we decided it was best for her".
Evidence an auditor will look for:
- A supported decision-making policy — and worker training records showing your people have actually been trained against it.
- Information provided in a form each participant can genuinely use, matched to how they communicate.
- Records showing you asked participants their preferences about how supports are provided, and what they said.
- Dignity-of-risk decisions documented — where a participant chose something you would not have chosen for them, and you recorded the choice and the discussion rather than quietly overriding it.
Safeguarding
Participants are protected from violence, abuse, neglect and harm — without that protection quietly becoming control. The notable emphasis here is conflict between housemates, which is one of the most common realities of shared living and one of the least consistently documented.
Evidence an auditor will look for:
- Safeguarding policy and procedures.
- Worker training in de-escalation, trauma-informed practice and positive behaviour support — dated, and matched to the people actually on shift.
- Incident management records kept at house level, not only at organisation level.
- Evidence that co-tenant conflict was identified, acted on, and followed up.
- Records showing safeguarding approaches were reviewed with participants, not just about them.
Practice governance
A trained, competent workforce delivering consistent practice across every shift and every worker — including the casual who covers a Sunday night once a month. This standard is where workforce records and house-level operational detail meet.
Evidence an auditor will look for:
- A workforce training framework, with supervision documented rather than assumed.
- A documented service vision, values and approach for each residence — how support is delivered in that house.
- Rehearsed, individualised emergency plans for each house. Rehearsed is the operative word: a plan in a folder is not the same as a drill you can show a record of.
- Co-tenant consultation and matching records — how you decided who lives with whom, and who you consulted.
- Evidence practice is consistent across shifts, not just when the good team is on.
Agreements about tenancy, housing and support
The service agreement and the tenancy agreement must be legally separate, and any conflict of interest between being someone's landlord and being their support provider has to be managed and disclosed. In plain terms: a participant should not lose their home because they want to change support provider.
Evidence an auditor will look for:
- Separate, signed service and tenancy agreements — genuinely two documents.
- A conflict-of-interest policy in a form participants can actually access and understand.
- Records confirming the participant understands the two agreements are separate and what that means for them.
- Service agreement terms that address co-tenant conflict, vacancies, and visitors.
Why your current readiness score probably overstates things
Here is the uncomfortable arithmetic. The Core Module has 24 outcomes. The SIL supplementary module adds four more. If you have been tracking your readiness against the Core Module alone — as most checklists, templates and tools still do — then a provider sitting at a comfortable 100% is really at about 86% against the standards they will actually be audited on.
That gap is not a rounding error. It is four whole standards that nobody has looked at, in the areas most specific to how supported independent living actually works.
Where to start
Standard 4 first — it is binary. Either your service and tenancy agreements are separate documents or they are not, and if they are not, that is a drafting job you want started now rather than in September.
Then Standard 3, because rehearsed emergency plans take calendar time. You cannot manufacture a drill record retrospectively, so whatever you have not done yet needs scheduling.
Standards 1 and 2 are mostly about capturing what you already do. The conversations are happening; the decisions are being supported; the housemate friction is being managed. The work is turning that into a record that survives someone else reading it cold.
Questions people ask
What is NDIS registration group 0138?
0138 is the registration group “Assistance with Supported Independent Living”. It replaced the previous arrangement under registration group 0115. Existing 0115 registrations are varied across to 0138 automatically, and claims must use 0138 from 1 July 2026.
What are the four new SIL Practice Standards?
Supported decision-making, Safeguarding, Practice governance, and Agreements about tenancy, housing and support. They apply in addition to the NDIS Practice Standards Core Module, not instead of it.
When do the SIL supplementary standards start applying?
From 1 July 2026. Unregistered SIL providers must lodge a registration application by 1 October 2026. Providers who miss that deadline can only claim for supports delivered up to 30 September 2026.
Do the SIL standards replace the Core Module?
No. They are supplementary. A SIL provider is assessed on the 24 Core Module outcomes plus these four, which is 28 in total. A readiness score built on the Core Module alone therefore overstates readiness by roughly 14 percentage points.
What is the most commonly missed evidence?
Three things recur: rehearsed emergency plans (a plan in a folder is not a drill record), housemate conflict that was handled well in person but recorded nowhere, and a single combined document covering both tenancy and support instead of two separate agreements.
Does tenancy really have to be a separate agreement from support?
Yes. The service agreement and the tenancy agreement must be legally separate, and any conflict of interest between being someone's landlord and their support provider has to be managed and disclosed. In practical terms, a participant should not lose their home because they change support provider.