NDIS SIL Mandatory Registration from 1 July 2026: What Providers Need to Know

From 1 July 2026, providers delivering Supported Independent Living (SIL) must operate under a new mandatory registration framework. This is one of the most significant regulatory changes the SIL sector has faced, and it directly affects how shift notes, incident records, and audit evidence must be structured.

This guide covers what is changing, what the new SIL Practice Standards require from documentation, and what providers should be doing now to ensure their evidence trail is ready from 1 July 2026.

What Is Changing for SIL Providers

The NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission is progressing two interconnected changes: mandatory registration for SIL providers and a new SIL Practice Standards module.

Mandatory registration under Group 0138. A new registration group — 0138, Assistance with Supported Independent Living — has been created specifically for SIL services. Providers currently delivering SIL under Group 0115 (Assistance with Daily Life) must transition into Group 0138 and meet its registration requirements, including compliance with the new SIL Practice Standards Core Module and certification audits.

New SIL Practice Standards module. A supplementary SIL Practice Standards module applies alongside the existing NDIS Practice Standards. The new module covers quality and safety in shared accommodation with daily supports, improving guidance for frontline workers, participant decision-making, safeguarding in the home, and practice governance.

Certification audits. Registered SIL providers must undergo certification audits that examine whether participant-centred, safe support is observable in practice — not just documented in policy. This is a higher standard than what most SIL providers have previously faced.

What Is the New Registration Group 0138

Group 0138 — Assistance with Supported Independent Living — is the registration group under which SIL-specific services must be delivered from 1 July 2026. It carries requirements that go beyond Group 0115:

• Compliance with the new supplementary SIL Practice Standards
• Compliance with the NDIS Practice Standards Core Module
• Certification audits (not just verification audits)
• Compliance with the NDIS Code of Conduct
• Incident management system requirements
• Notification requirements for reportable incidents
• Behaviour support requirements where applicable

The transition pathway for existing Group 0115 providers requires them to apply the new SIL Practice Standards from 1 July 2026 and demonstrates compliance at their next scheduled audit.

What the New SIL Practice Standards Require from Documentation

The new SIL Practice Standards introduce documentation expectations that are more specific than existing shift note requirements. The key areas are:

1. Supported decision-making

The draft SIL Practice Standards require that participants are supported to make decisions about daily life, routines, relationships, and their home, based on their individual needs, skills, and communication preferences. Workers must use tailored communication tools, give participants time, and support ongoing decision-making.

This creates a documentation requirement that most current shift notes do not meet. Notes must capture:

2. Safeguarding and early harm recognition

The draft SIL Safeguarding Standard requires workers to recognise early signs of harm and respond using trauma-informed and person-centred approaches. It also requires providers and workers to evidence the steps taken to manage risks in the home, including risks between people living in the house.

For shared accommodation providers, this is particularly important. Risks between housemates — conflict, bullying, intimidation — must be documented with specificity. A note that says "there was a disagreement, staff supported" does not satisfy the new standard.

3. Practice governance: consistent, observable practice

The draft Practice Governance Standard requires providers and workers to demonstrate that workforce management systems translate into consistent, observable practice in the participant's home. Notes must show that support meets individual needs, preferences, communication style, and cultural considerations.

This means a note cannot simply record that a shift occurred. It must show, in observable terms, how the specific participant was supported according to their individual plan. When auditors examine a participant's note record, they look across multiple shifts and multiple workers for evidence of consistent, participant-specific practice.

For SIL providers, inconsistency across workers is a significant risk. If one worker documents in detail and another writes generic notes, the participant's record shows uneven practice — even if the care delivered was good.

4. Evidence-based practice improvement

The draft provider statement requires providers to use data, feedback, and evidence-based practice to drive continuous improvement in practice quality. This is not just a governance requirement — it has implications for documentation infrastructure. Providers need to be able to extract patterns from their documentation records, identify systemic gaps, and demonstrate that identified issues have been addressed through corrective action.

Why Generic Shift Notes Will Not Satisfy the New Standards

Most shift note systems record that a shift occurred. They capture time in, time out, a text field for narrative, and perhaps some structured fields for incidents or medication. This level of documentation was sufficient under the previous compliance environment.

The new SIL Practice Standards set a higher bar. The Commission is moving from asking "Do you have a policy?" to asking "Can you prove your workers applied it in the participant's home?" The answer to that question is in the shift note record — not in the policy folder.

For SIL providers, the specific documentation gaps that the new standards will expose include:

• Notes that do not reference the participant's communication preferences or AAC strategies
• Notes that describe conflict or behavioural incidents without recording the de-escalation response or linking to the behaviour support plan
• Notes that record medication administration without recording the participant's response or relevant observations
• Notes that are identical or near-identical across multiple shifts (copy-paste), indicating that individual practice is not being documented
• Notes that mention risk indicators (anxiety, distress, conflict) without recording what action was taken
• Notes from different workers that show no consistency in how participant-specific requirements are documented

What Providers Should Do Before 1 July 2026

Providers have a limited window to prepare their documentation systems before the new standards apply. The key actions are:

1. Audit your current note quality against the new requirements. Pull 30 days of notes for your highest-risk participants and assess them against the supported decision-making, safeguarding, and practice governance requirements above. Most providers will find significant gaps.
2. Update participant profiles with communication plans and BSP requirements. The new standards require notes that reflect how each participant communicates and what their behaviour support plan requires. These need to be in the documentation system before workers can be expected to document them.
3. Address copy-paste patterns immediately. If notes are being duplicated across shifts or participants, this is a material compliance failure under the existing standards. Under the new SIL standards it will be more visible and harder to explain.
4. Set up a risk register for house-level patterns. The Safeguarding Standard requires tracking recurring risks between housemates. A spreadsheet is not sufficient for certification audit purposes. The risk register must have source evidence, corrective actions, and resolution records.
5. Brief your workers on the new documentation expectations. Workers who currently write generic notes need to understand what the new standards require — specifically the decision-making evidence and safeguarding evidence fields. Training alone is not enough; the note form must prompt for these fields.

The Documentation Standard the Commission Is Moving Toward

The NDIS Commission has described the reform direction using three types of expectation statements: a participant statement (what good support looks like from the participant's perspective), a worker statement (what good practice looks like for frontline staff), and a provider statement (what organisational accountability looks like).

For providers, the key phrase in the provider statement is that providers must use data, feedback, and evidence-based practice to drive continuous improvement in practice quality. This is not a passive requirement. It means the documentation system must be capable of surfacing patterns, identifying gaps, and feeding back into practice improvement — not just recording what happened.

For workers, the expectation is that training must be visible in practice. A worker who has completed training in person-centred practice, trauma-informed support, and active support must be able to demonstrate those practices in their shift note record. If training is completed but notes show no evidence of those practices, the training is not demonstrably translating into support delivery.

For participants, the expectation is that support delivered in the home matches their individual needs, communication preferences, and support plan requirements. The documentation must show the participant as an active participant in their own support — not a passive recipient of whatever the worker decided to do.

How the New Standards Affect Shared Accommodation Specifically

SIL is particularly complex from a documentation perspective because multiple participants share a physical space, and risks can exist between participants as well as between participants and the external environment. The draft SIL Safeguarding Standard explicitly addresses this.

For shared accommodation providers, the new standards create specific documentation obligations:

• House-level risk patterns must be tracked — a single incident note is not sufficient if the same pattern is recurring across shifts
• Incidents between housemates must be documented with specificity: who was involved, what was observed, what the trigger appeared to be, what de-escalation strategy was used, whether anyone was at risk, and whether the pattern is recurring
• Risk mitigation steps must be evidenced — notes must show what was done in response to a risk, not just that a risk existed
• Behaviour support plan strategies must be visibly applied in documentation — workers cannot simply note "BSP followed" without documenting what strategy was applied and what the outcome was

For SIL providers, the risk is rarely one incident. It is the pattern across shifts. Auditors examining a shared accommodation provider's records will look across the full note history for evidence of patterns, responses, and systemic risk management. A provider who can produce a structured risk register with source evidence and corrective action records is in a fundamentally different position to one who can only produce a folder of shift notes.

Summary: What Changes from 1 July 2026

• SIL providers must register under Group 0138 (not Group 0115) to deliver SIL services
• The new SIL Practice Standards module applies from 1 July 2026
• Providers will be audited against the new standards at their next mid-term or renewal audit
• Shift notes must demonstrate supported decision-making at the point of support
• Safeguarding incidents must be documented with evidence of steps taken, de-escalation responses, and risk linkage
• Practice governance requires observable, consistent, participant-specific practice across all workers
• House-level risk patterns must be tracked across shifts, not treated as isolated incidents
• Provider documentation systems must support continuous improvement, not just recording

The providers who are best positioned after 1 July 2026 are those who treat the new standards as a documentation infrastructure question, not just a training question. Training tells workers what to do. Documentation infrastructure makes sure they do it consistently, and that the evidence is there when the auditor asks.

Read the NDIS audit documentation checklist for a full pre-audit review, or explore how NoteGate maps to the new SIL Practice Standards for a structured look at each requirement and the relevant NoteGate capability.