The mandatory SIL registration timeline has been published. Here is what it means, and what to do about it depending on where your business sits.
If you deliver Supported Independent Living, this affects you. 1 July 2026 is close. The providers who come out of this in good shape will be the ones who work out their position early and move on it. The ones who wait will be doing it under pressure later, and SIL is not the part of the sector to be rushing.
Where things stand
Registration becomes mandatory for every SIL and Platform Provider from 1 July 2026. The Minister confirmed that in December 2025. The transition timeline, how you get registered depending on your situation, is now published.
One piece is still in draft. The 4 new SIL Practice Standards. They have been designed and piloted, and the final wording is still being settled.
What is confirmed and what is not is set out below, so you know what to build toward now and what to wait on.
First, the definition
The Commission has defined Supported Independent Living in a specific way, and that definition decides whether any of this applies to you at all.
SIL is a package of home and living support for people with higher support needs. To meet the definition, 3 things need to be true.
The participant needs support at all times of the day, or for most of the day.
The support helps the person live in their home as independently as possible and access their community, by assisting with or supervising the tasks of daily life.
And the provider is managing and delivering the full package of SIL supports. Not contributing a few hours to it. Managing it.
And what it is not
It is not SIL if a person receives only a few hours of support a day or a week. And it is not SIL if the person chooses and manages their own support workers, directing, planning, and rostering them themselves.
If your participant is self directing their workers, that is not SIL under this definition.
Sole traders, this one is for you
If you are delivering, managing, and coordinating a participant’s supports, and those supports meet the definition, you are a SIL provider. Full stop.
No carve out for sole traders. No minimum size threshold. No exemption for operating as an individual rather than a company.
If that is you, the process takes time. Start understanding your position this week.
Why this is happening
A new registration group for SIL, and 4 new Practice Standards. Both shaped by what reviews and participants have been saying for years.
Beyond the deadline itself, 2 things are changing.
The first is the registration group. SIL currently sits inside the older group 0115. The reform separates it into its own group, 0138 Assistance with Supported Independent Living, from 1 July 2026.
The second is the new SIL Practice Standards. Once they commence, registered SIL providers meet them in addition to the core NDIS Practice Standards you already work to.
Review after review found the same thing. Risks to participant safety, and not enough oversight of who was delivering these supports.
The Royal Commission, the NDIS Review, the Own Motion Inquiries. They all landed in the same place. Registration for SIL, and stronger protections for people in supported living.
And this is what the participants themselves said. People who felt they could not have visitors. Could not stay with family. Could not speak up. That is what this reform is responding to.
The standards are still proposed
The standards were designed with Inclusion Australia and people with disability through 2025, and tested in a small audit pilot in February 2026, with findings reported in late March.
What follows is the direction of travel, not the final printed rule. The intent is clear. The exact wording is still being finalised.
They were built with participants, not just for them. That is the difference in how these standards were made.
And the whole direction has moved. Away from ticking a compliance box, toward what the support actually does for the person living there. That changes how you read every one of these standards.
Find your path
There are 6 situations. Now the timeline is published, you can work out exactly which one is yours.
At a glance: 1, registered under 0115 and already delivering. 2, unregistered and delivering, applying before 1 July. 3, unregistered and delivering, applying after 1 July. 4, registered without 0115, wanting to add SIL. 5, new to the NDIS, applying before 1 July. 6, new to the NDIS, applying after 1 July.
Everything below sits on the published transition timeline.
Situation 1. Registered under 0115 and delivering SIL
The simplest path, and it asks almost nothing right now.
The Commission carries your registration across from 0115 to the new SIL group, 0138, as part of the transition. You don’t apply separately.
Your job is to be ready to meet the new standards once they commence. Your next audit, mid term check or renewal, will eventually be assessed against them. If your systems were built around the old 0115 requirements, that is what to review.
Situation 2. Unregistered, delivering, applying before 1 July 2026
You can keep delivering while your application is in progress. Apply before 1 July, receive your scope of audit, engage an Approved Quality Auditor, complete the audit.
An audit before the standards commence won’t include them. After, it will.
The constraint here is timing. Applications and audits take months. If you have not started, start this week.
Situation 3. Unregistered, delivering, applying after 1 July 2026
This is where the timing gets sharper.
You can keep delivering while your application is in progress, and it has to be in before 1 October 2026. After 1 July you apply under the new SIL group, 0138, and your audit includes the new standards from the start.
If you have not applied by 1 October 2026, you have to stop delivering SIL. Delivering supports the law now requires you to be registered for, while you are not registered, is a criminal offence under the NDIS Act. The 2026 amendments made that explicit.
The maximum for the criminal offence is 2 years imprisonment, or 120 penalty units, which right now is $39,600, or both. There is also a strict liability version underneath that at 60 penalty units, around $19,800, where they do not have to prove you meant to do it. Only that you did it.
Some providers do not know the consequence carries weight like that now. You can’t make a clear decision with half the picture missing.
So if you intend to stay in this work, get inside the process well before 1 October. Not the week before. Well before.
A note on the figures. The Commonwealth penalty unit value is indexed and rises on 1 July 2026, so the dollar amounts above will shift upward after that date. The structure of the offence does not change. The cost of ignoring it does.
Situation 4. Registered without 0115, wanting to add SIL
You apply to vary your existing registration, before or after 1 July. Applications before the new group commences go in under 0115. After, under the new SIL group, 0138.
The Commission may ask for an audit to add the group. Whether it includes the new standards depends on when it happens.
Situation 5. New to the NDIS, applying before 1 July 2026
The key difference from situations 2 and 3 is that you can’t deliver SIL until you are approved. There is no existing delivery to continue while you wait.
On timing, the window to complete an audit before 1 July is essentially closed. Plan around an audit that will include the new standards.
Situation 6. New to the NDIS, applying after 1 July 2026
You can’t deliver until you are approved. You apply under the new SIL group, 0138, and your audit includes the new standards from the start.
There is no earlier registration to transition from. The new standards are simply the bar you build to, from day one.
The four new Practice Standards (still proposed)
These are built from the standards you already know in the core module, so none of this is a foreign language. Each one’s intent is clear enough to start shaping your practice in the right direction now.
There are four. Supported Decision Making. Safeguarding. Practice Governance. And Agreements about Tenancy, Housing and Support.
Standard 1. Supported Decision Making
This is the one tested in the February pilot, so it is the most developed of the four.
The participant makes the decisions about their own daily life, their routines, their relationships, and their home. They are supported by people who know them well to make those decisions in a way that reflects their own choice and preference.
Your job as the provider is to make that real in the home, not just on paper.
Standard 2. Safeguarding
This one centres on dignity of risk, and that phrase matters.
A participant has the right to make choices that carry some risk, the same way any adult does. Your duty of care sits alongside that right rather than overriding it.
It points to how you keep people safe while still leaving them in control of their own home and daily life.
Standard 3. Practice Governance
This one speaks to providers delivering support around the clock, where people live together and relationships inside the home get complicated.
It is about how you manage those relationships well. How conflict is handled. How you balance competing needs and priorities under one roof, so the house works for everyone in it.
Standard 4. Agreements about Tenancy, Housing and Support
This is about making sure participants understand their service agreement, and how it sits alongside their tenancy agreement.
It points to the provider supporting genuine tenancy management, so a participant can exercise choice and control and hold their tenancy rights. Rather than feeling their home depends on staying quiet and keeping the provider happy.
The thread through all four
The participant’s voice, rights, and freedoms come first, inside their own home. That is what every one of these standards is reaching for.
Each one is built the same way. An intent, an outcome, and the actions that show it is actually happening in the home. That structure is how an auditor will eventually read your practice.
There is guidance being built around each one to show providers and workers what good looks like. The detail is coming.
What’s confirmed, and what’s still being finalised
How each one will be assessed, the exact evidence, the precise wording of every indicator, that detail is still being finalised. The direction is what’s useful right now.
You are already building toward where these standards are going if your practice already puts the participant’s choice at the centre of decisions in the home. If you support people to take reasonable risks with dignity. If you manage shared houses so relationships work. And if you help participants understand their agreements and feel safe raising concerns.
A full breakdown of the standards will follow once the detail is confirmed.
Providers who get this right end up with clearer expectations, a stronger workforce, fewer incidents, and more trust from the families they serve. The standard is the floor. Good practice on top of it is what builds the business.
The whole picture
Registered under 0115 and delivering. Your registration is carried across to 0138. Make the home reflect the new standards before your next audit.
Unregistered and delivering. Apply now. The process takes time, and the window to apply while you keep delivering does not stay open forever.
Brand new to the NDIS. You can’t deliver until you are approved. Build your timeline around that, and your documentation to the new standards from the start.
Sole trader calling it shared care. If you manage the full package for someone who needs support most of the day, go back to the definition. If it fits, this is yours.
Everything else gets easier once you know exactly where you stand.
Situation 1, read your policies against where the standards are heading. Situations 2 and 3, your application process starts this week, not this month. Situations 5 and 6, build to the new standards from day one, and plan honestly.
The baseline
Registration is not a hoop to jump through. It is the baseline that tells the people in your care they are protected by a provider whose work has been checked.
You do not have to have all of this finished today. The standards are still being finalised, and there is time to get ready while they are.
Name your group. Name your situation. Start the process while there is still runway.