New Rules for Support in Your Home: What the SIL Practice Standards Mean for You
If someone supports you in your own home, there are now clearer rules about what that support is supposed to look like.
From 1 July 2026, providers registered to deliver supported independent living must meet a new set of NDIS Practice Standards written specifically for support delivered where people live. Last week we wrote about registration itself. This week is about what registration actually obliges a provider to do once they are through your front door.
We are writing it in plain language, because these standards are about your daily life, and you should not need a compliance background to understand them.
The four standards, in plain language
The new supported independent living Practice Standards cover four areas.
Supported decision-making. Support should help you make your own decisions, rather than making them for you. That includes the small daily ones, what you eat, when you shower, how you spend a Saturday, and the larger ones about your home and your life. Being supported to decide is not the same as being consulted after the fact.
Safeguarding. You should be safe, and there should be systems that keep you safe rather than relying on any one worker being a good person. That means knowing how to raise a concern, being confident it will be taken seriously, and never feeling that speaking up puts your support at risk.
Practice governance. The organisation behind the workers should actually be running things properly. Supervision, training, oversight, and a leadership team that knows what is happening in the homes it is responsible for. This is the standard that separates a well-run provider from a provider that simply sends people out.
Agreements about tenancy, housing and support arrangements. Where you live and who supports you are two different things, and you should have clarity about both. Your housing arrangements and your support arrangements should be clear, documented and understood by you.
That fourth one matters more than it sounds. For a lot of people in shared accommodation, the line between "my home" and "my service" has been blurry for years. Clarity there is genuinely a step forward.
The free resources most participants do not know exist
Here is the part we most want you to take from this article.
Alongside the standards, the NDIS Commission has published a participant guide called Reflective Questions for Participants. It is a set of simple, clear questions to help you think about your own experience of supported independent living, and to help you relate that experience to what the standards actually require.
It exists so that participants can be informed, prepared and genuinely involved in decisions about their own supports, rather than having those conversations happen over their heads.
There is an Easy Read version of the Reflective Questions, an Easy Read factsheet on the new rules for good and safe support, and an Easy Read glossary explaining the key terms. All of it is free, and all of it is on the NDIS Commission website.
Here are the direct links, so you do not have to go hunting:
Reflective Questions for Participants: https://www.ndiscommission.gov.au/sites/default/files/2026-06/SIL-PS-Refective-Questions-Participants-PDF.pdf
Easy Read version of the same guide: https://www.ndiscommission.gov.au/sites/default/files/2026-06/ER-SIL-PS-Refective-Questions-Participants-PDF.pdf
The full set, including the standards themselves and the glossary: https://www.ndiscommission.gov.au/rules-and-standards/ndis-practice-standards/sil
If you support someone in SIL, or you are in SIL yourself, those documents are worth an evening. They are written to be used at a kitchen table, with whoever you want beside you.
What we do with these standards
We could tell you we meet the standards. Every provider will say that, so the sentence carries very little weight on its own.
What we would rather say is how we think about them.
The standards describe a floor. Supported decision-making as a minimum requirement, not a philosophy. Safeguarding as a system, not a promise. Governance as something auditable. That floor is exactly where good practice should start, and a provider whose ambition stops there has misunderstood the job.
What we are aiming for sits above the floor, and it is the same thing we have said since day one. Consistent workers who know your routine without being reminded. Care plans built with you rather than for you. Cultural understanding rather than cultural awareness, in every home we walk into. Support that treats you as a Boss, a King, a Queen.
Standards make that measurable. They do not make it happen. People do.
Use the questions on us
If you are an FQC participant, we would genuinely like you to read the Reflective Questions and bring them to us. Ask us the hard ones. Tell us where we are falling short of what you expected.
We would rather hear it from you directly and fix it, than have you sit quietly with a service that is not what you deserve. That is not a comfortable invitation for a provider to make in public, and we are making it anyway, because it is the only version of this that is honest.
And if you are considering supported independent living in Sydney and want a registered provider who will hand you the standards, explain them, and then invite you to hold us to them, we are very easy to reach.
Warmly,
Ruby Akron, COO
▸ Phone: +61 450 449 362
▸ Email: [email protected]
▸ Website: https://freedomqualitycare.com.au/
Freedom Quality Care is an NDIS registered service provider based in Western Sydney. This article is for general information purposes only and is based on official Australian Government and NDIS sources current as of May 2026. For advice specific to your plan, please speak with your planner, Local Area Coordinator, or support coordinator.
