NDIS SIL roster of care: is it required, and do you submit it?

On the National Disability Insurance Agency's current guidance, a supported independent living (SIL) roster of care is not required, and a provider does not need to submit one to the Agency. Version 4 of the NDIA's "Guide to using the provider SIL roster of care tool", dated June 2026, states that "a roster of care is not required" and "You do not need to submit this template".

Two things sit alongside that. Where the NDIA has a participant's roster of care it will use it, alongside assessments and other information, and its participant-facing guideline does not ask a participant for one either: it says only that a participant who provides one will "usually only need to give us one roster of care". So completing one with a participant stays optional, and can still help a home and living supports request. Separately, none of this removes a provider's own need for an agreed weekly schedule of supports to attach to the service agreement and reconcile claims against. Supported independent living funding is decided by the NDIA, so this position applies in every Australian state and territory.

Last updated 2 November 2026. Jurisdiction: Australia, all states and territories.

Is a SIL roster of care required, and do you have to submit it to the NDIA?

A roster of care is a record of the supports a provider proposes to deliver to a participant in a supported independent living arrangement under the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), set out across a typical week. The NDIA publishes a tool for filling one in and a guide to using that tool.

The guide, titled "Guide to using the provider SIL roster of care tool" and marked Version 4, June 2026, answers the requirement question four separate times:

• Under its introduction: "Please note that a roster of care is not required."
• Under the purpose of the tool: "However, completing the roster of care tool is not a requirement."
• Under the heading "Submitting the roster of care": "Please note the roster of care is no longer a requirement."
• Immediately after that: "You do not need to submit this template."

The same guide sets out what the NDIA may do with one if it gets it: "If we decide SIL is the best home and living option for the participant, we may use a participant's roster of care, alongside other supporting information, to determine the reasonable and necessary supports to include in the participant's plan." The Agency may use it, alongside other information. It does not say it needs it.

You will nonetheless find pages published in 2026 stating that a roster of care is mandatory for a SIL funding request, or that the completed roster is to be emailed to the NDIA. On the requirement question, the NDIA's own current guide says otherwise, and the guide is the better authority.

The NDIA's publications do not describe the same route

None of the three NDIA publications below says a roster of care is required. Where they part company is on who does what with one, and the page a provider is most likely to land on is the oldest of the three.

NDIA publication	Date it carries	Is a roster of care required?	What it says about the route
Guide to using the provider SIL roster of care tool	Version 4, June 2026	"a roster of care is not required"; "no longer a requirement"	"You do not need to submit this template." If the participant wants planning discussions to consider it, "give it to the participant and their support coordinator"
Supported independent living guideline, written to the participant	7 July 2026	Does not say it is required. The NDIA uses "your roster of care if you have one"	"You'll usually only need to give us one roster of care", and "we might need a new roster of care" if things change
Supported independent living roster of care submissions, written to the provider	"This page current as of 1 August 2023"	Does not say either way. The words "not required" do not appear on it	"providers can email it" to an NDIA inbox, or give it to the support coordinator to submit

The first two fit together, and the practical rule falls out of reading them side by side. The provider guide tells the provider not to submit the template, and to hand it to the participant and their support coordinator if the participant wants planning discussions to consider it. The participant guideline then tells the participant "You'll usually only need to give us one roster of care." Those are two halves of one route: the provider compiles it with the participant, and the participant or their support coordinator includes it in a home and living supports request or a plan reassessment. On that reading nobody is told a roster is compulsory, and the provider is not the party lodging it.

The third describes a different route. The submissions page tells providers they "can email it" to an NDIA inbox, and it carries "must" wording about how a roster is completed. It is dated 1 August 2023, close to three years before the current guide, and it does not contain the words "not required" anywhere. It also notes that one of the inboxes it names "is no longer monitored". On substance it does agree with the other two about what a roster is worth: "It is important to remember that the roster of care submission is only one piece of information the NDIA use to help determine the right amount of funding." The problem is the route, not the principle, and a provider who finds this page first will reasonably conclude the roster is a mandatory submission.

What a roster of care is, in the NDIA's words

The provider guide also says: "The Roster of Care is not the exact schedule of supports that will be provided to the person, nor an agreement with the NDIA. The actual supports must be agreed with the participant and or nominees once the NDIA approves their plan funding."

So it is a proposal, not a commitment, and not a contract with the Agency. The participant guideline says the same thing from the other side: "A roster of care doesn't decide the amount or type of NDIS supports you will get in your plan" and "A roster of care only describes the types of supports you can get from your registered supported independent living provider." That guideline lists what one contains: the hours of support needed for day-to-day activities at home "in an ordinary week", the support ratio, the level "for example standard or high intensity", the type of overnight support, and the amount of irregular support. It also says a participant "can ask your supported independent living provider for your roster of care at any time".

What the NDIA uses to decide SIL funding

If the roster is optional, something else carries the weight. The NDIA's supported independent living guideline, dated 7 July 2026, says: "We'll use all available information, like your roster of care if you have one, assessments and reports to work this out."

What it names elsewhere is evidence about day-to-day support needs: "assessments or reports from a qualified and registered allied health professional or behavioural support practitioner that tell us about things you can and can't do because of your disability", and "reports or occupational therapy assessments". Where that evidence is thin, the guideline says the NDIA "may ask you to get an assessment", and "we may fund an assessment by a qualified and registered allied health professional to help us understand what support you need". In other words, the lever on a SIL funding decision is the quality of the clinical and functional evidence, not the tidiness of a spreadsheet.

The same guideline carries a notice that matters more than the roster question: "the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission now requires all providers delivering supported independent living to be registered". If you deliver SIL and are not registered, start there rather than with rostering paperwork. SIL mandatory registration and what changed in 2026 covers the dates and the narrow carve-outs.

What applies if you do complete one

Optional does not mean unconstrained. Both the provider guide and the submissions page put the same obligation on a provider who fills one in. The provider guide: "Providers must consult with the participant, or their nominee, to compile the information included in the roster of care." The submissions page says the same, ending "included in the roster of care submission." A roster written in the office and presented to the participant afterwards does not meet that, and consultation evidence is the kind of thing a Module 5A assessment looks for.

The 2023 submissions page also sets out the evidence the NDIA looked for alongside a roster: where a participant requires high intensity supports, "providers must include evidence to support this", and "Reports must not be older than two years and should be from an independent service provider." The current guide does not repeat that, so treat it as a guide to the standard of evidence rather than a live obligation. If high intensity supports are in scope, whether you need to be registered to deliver high intensity supports covers the rest.

The roster is optional. An agreed weekly schedule of supports is a different document

A roster of care is an input to an NDIA funding decision. An agreed weekly schedule of supports is an operating and claiming document, and dropping it because the roster is optional would be the wrong conclusion. It is what a SIL service agreement is built around, what claims are reconciled against, and what a registered provider's auditor is more likely to ask for than a copy of a roster of care. What to include in a SIL service agreement sets out the content and the review cycle; the claim submission window is narrowing, so that reconciliation now has to happen close to delivery, as the 90 day claim rule from December 2026 explains.

If a participant's funding is reassessed, the weekly schedule is the document you rework first. The guideline notes that "If things change, or we decide to reassess your plan, we might need a new roster of care", and the support budget changes flowing through from 1 October 2026 explain who can actually ask for a reassessment.

What to do: recommendations

• Stop treating a roster of care as a compliance deliverable. On the NDIA's current provider guide it is not one.
• Keep an agreed weekly schedule of supports for every SIL participant, with days, times, ratio and overnight type, signed and attached to the service agreement, and reviewed at least annually and whenever the pattern changes.
• If a participant wants a roster of care considered in planning, compile it with them and give it to the participant and their support coordinator for their home and living supports request or plan reassessment, rather than relying on an email route described on a page dated 2023.
• Record the consultation. "Providers must consult with the participant, or their nominee" applies to any roster you compile.
• Put your effort into the clinical and functional evidence, because that is what the guideline says the funding decision turns on.
• If any of your own documents or templates tell a worker that a roster of care is mandatory or is submitted to the NDIA, correct them.

Templates for this topic

The SIL Schedule of Supports and Typical Week (SIL-06) is built for the job described above: an agreed weekly record covering days, times, ratio, overnight type and the claiming arrangement, to attach to a service agreement rather than to go to the NDIA. It is in the SIL Supplementary Module Add-On and the NDIS Provider Core Library, alongside the SIL policy and service agreement templates.

Pack, 29 templatesSIL Supplementary Module Add-On$149Template SIL-06SIL Schedule of Supports and Typical Week$24.99

See every document and its current version on the What is in the SIL Supplementary Module page, or compare packs on which pack is right for you.

Templates are a starting point. Each one needs customising to how you work and putting into practice, and audit and claim outcomes depend on your practice and records, not on the documents.

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Frequently asked questions

Has the NDIA removed the roster of care tool?

Some commercial sites report that the NDIA has taken the Excel spreadsheet down from its website, and sell their own replacement. We have not been able to establish that either way from NDIA pages, and no NDIA notice about a withdrawal could be found. The NDIA's June 2026 guide still describes the tool in the present tense as "a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet". What is clear from that guide is the requirement question: "completing the roster of care tool is not a requirement".

Who do I give a roster of care to if a participant wants one considered?

The NDIA's provider guide says to "give it to the participant and their support coordinator to be included in the participant's home and living supports request or plan reassessment". It also says "You do not need to submit this template", so the provider is not the party lodging it. An older NDIA submissions page does still describe an email route, but that page is marked current as of 1 August 2023 and predates the current guide.

Does a roster of care decide how much SIL funding a participant gets?

No. The NDIA's supported independent living guideline states that "A roster of care doesn't decide the amount or type of NDIS supports you will get in your plan" and that it "only describes the types of supports you can get from your registered supported independent living provider". The provider guide adds that it is "not the exact schedule of supports that will be provided to the person, nor an agreement with the NDIA".

If the roster of care is optional, do I still need a weekly record of supports?

Yes, for different reasons. An agreed weekly schedule of supports is what makes a SIL service agreement workable, what claims are reconciled against, and what a registered provider's auditor is more likely to ask for than a roster of care, alongside delivery and review records. The roster of care is an input to an NDIA funding decision; the weekly schedule is an operating and claiming document, and the two are not interchangeable.

Sources

• NDIA, Guide to using the provider SIL roster of care tool, Version 4, June 2026.
• NDIA, Supported independent living guideline, 7 July 2026.
• NDIA, Supported independent living roster of care submissions, page current as of 1 August 2023.

All three sources were read on 2 November 2026. This is general information for Australian NDIS providers, not legal, financial or clinical advice, and NDIA guidance on supported independent living changes. Check the current version of each source before acting on anything here, and get your own advice on your own circumstances.

Related guides

• What to include in a SIL service agreement
• SIL mandatory registration
• What is Module 5A?
• Support budget changes from 1 October 2026
• High intensity supports and registration
• How long NDIS providers must keep records

Browse every guide by topic: NDIS compliance guides.