How do I refer a participant to a SIL vacancy?

Send the provider enough information to answer two questions: can this team meet the person’s support needs safely in that home, and is the household a reasonable fit both ways? In practice that means a current NDIS plan, recent functional evidence, any behaviour support plan, an honest hour-by-hour picture of daily and overnight support, and the practical details — location, decision-makers, consent and timing.

This guide is written for support coordinators and recovery coaches making that first approach. It covers what belongs in a referral, what a provider does with it, the steps that take longer than people expect, and what to check before a home goes on your shortlist.

What a SIL provider is actually deciding

A referral is not an application for a bed. It starts two assessments that run side by side: whether the supports can be delivered safely within the roster and funding available, and whether the person and the people already living in the house are a workable match. A vacancy can be right on the first count and wrong on the second, and a provider worth referring to will say so early rather than late.

The NDIA treats the coordinator as central to this. Its guide to providing supported independent living notes that participants funded for home and living supports will typically also have support coordination funding, and that the coordinator’s role includes talking with SIL providers about the support they can deliver within the participant’s plan funding.

The referral pack that moves fastest

Intake teams are usually held up by missing documents rather than by a shortage of interest. Sending the following in one go removes most of the back and forth:

• The current NDIS plan or plan summary — including whether SIL and SDA are already funded, and how the plan is managed.
• Recent functional evidence — an occupational therapy or functional capacity report that describes what the person can do and where support is needed.
• Any behaviour support plan, interim or comprehensive, plus any regulated restrictive practices currently in place and who authorises them.
• Health and clinical needs — be specific about anything that calls for high intensity supports, such as enteral feeding, seizure management, complex bowel care, tracheostomy care or diabetes management, and note which tasks need delegation from a nurse.
• The daily rhythm — a typical weekday and weekend mapped across the day, including overnight, and whether overnight support is active or a sleepover.
• Communication, culture and preferences — language, interpreter needs, communication method, gender of workers, faith, food, pets, routines that matter.
• Housing requirements — SDA design category if eligible, home modifications, vehicle and parking access, and how close the person needs to be to family, work, study or a treating team.
• Who decides, and consent to share — nominee, guardian or family decision-maker, and written consent for the information you are sending.
• Timing and the current situation — a hospital ward, a placement ending, family care under strain and a planned move are four very different levels of urgency. Where discharge is involved, our guide to moving from hospital to home sets out what usually needs to line up first.

If part of the file is out of date, say so rather than leaving the gap for the provider to find. A referral that says “the OT report is from 2024 and a review is booked for September” is far easier to plan around than one that arrives silent on the point.

Check registration before you shortlist

This is the change that matters most this year. From 1 July 2026, providers delivering SIL must be registered with the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission. The NDIA has told participants that their SIL provider must be registered, or have applied to register, by 1 October 2026, that plans and funding will not change, and that participants whose provider does not register will be helped to move to one that has — see the NDIA’s notice on mandatory registration for SIL providers.

For coordinators that turns into a simple screening question at first contact: are you registered, and for which supports? You can confirm the answer yourself through the NDIS provider finder. It is also worth knowing what registration now commits a provider to: the Commission’s supported independent living practice standards cover supported decision-making, safeguarding, practice governance, and agreements about tenancy, housing and support arrangements. Those four headings are a useful structure for the questions you ask on a site visit.

The roster of care is a tool, not a form you have to lodge

Plenty of coordinators still chase a roster of care as though the NDIA is waiting on one. It is not. The NDIA states plainly that a roster of care is not a requirement and does not need to be submitted to the agency — it is a tool for the provider and the participant to break down weekly support needs and show how supports will be delivered, and there is a template available for it.

That makes it more useful, not less. Ask each shortlisted provider for a roster on the same basis and you can compare homes on something concrete: how many hours are one-to-one, what is shared across the household, who is awake overnight, and how the ratio changes on a bad day. Two points worth carrying into that conversation:

• Only one support can be claimed across a 24-hour period, so time in the community sits under core supports rather than SIL for those hours.
• The NDIA generally funds 10 irregular support days a year for participants with standard support needs and 15 for those with high intensity support needs, to cover unplanned situations such as illness keeping someone home from a day program.

Housemate matching is the slow part

Support needs can be assessed from paper. Whether three or four people can share a kitchen cannot. This is where a referral genuinely takes time, and where rushing tends to cost everyone a placement six months later.

A reasonable process looks like a phone conversation, a look through the home, a meet and greet with the people already living there, and often a short stay or a few visits before anyone signs — all subject to availability and suitability. The residents already in the house have a say in who joins them; supported decision-making is one of the four SIL practice standard modules, and it applies to them as much as to the person you are referring. Expect a provider to consult them, and be wary of one that does not.

Practical things to weigh with the family: sleep patterns and noise, day program and work routines, whether behaviour support plans in the home interact, gender mix, shared interests, and how far the house sits from the people the participant wants to see. Our earlier guide on choosing a SIL provider goes further into what the answers to these questions tend to reveal.

If SIL funding is not in the plan yet

You can still approach providers — many will look at a file and give you an indicative view of fit — but the funding pathway runs on its own track. A home and living request needs recent evidence from a relevant treating professional covering functional capacity, daily support needs including how often and when support is required, and the impact on daily life and housing needs. The NDIA sets out the pathway in how to ask for home and living supports, and our guide to the evidence a home and living request needs covers what tends to make the difference.

Two eligibility points save wasted work. SIL is for people who need support or supervision across a full 24 hours — the NDIA is explicit that it is not SIL if someone only needs a few hours of support a day or a week, or if they direct and roster their own workers. And SIL is not housing: SDA funds the dwelling, SIL funds the people, and a participant can be funded for one without the other.

Questions worth asking before you send the file

• Are you registered with the NDIS Commission, and for which supports?
• Is this vacancy live now, or expected? What is holding it up?
• Who lives in the home already — ages, routines, support profiles at a general level?
• Is overnight support active or a sleepover in this house, and does that change on weekends?
• How do you match and roster workers, and how consistent is the team week to week?
• How do you handle a housemate conflict, and at what point do you involve the residents in the decision?
• If the participant needs high intensity supports, how are workers trained, supervised and delegated to?
• Is the tenancy separate from the support agreement, and what happens to the tenancy if the person later changes support provider?

That last question is worth asking in writing. Where the same organisation provides both the housing and the support, participants and coordinators should know before they sign how the two come apart — something we cover in our guide to changing SIL providers mid-plan.

Vacancies in Melbourne’s west, regional Victoria and Perth

Vitality Community Care is a registered NDIS provider with supported homes across Victoria, New South Wales and Western Australia, including Werribee, Tarneit, Sunbury, Melton, Donnybrook and Epping, and suburbs around Perth. You can browse current SIL and SDA vacancies and filter by state, bedrooms and design category. Every vacancy is subject to availability and suitability, and a match is confirmed only after the household and the participant have met.

If you have a participant in mind, the quickest route is our referral form — it is built around the information above — or call 1300 395 852 and ask for intake. Where a home is not the right fit, we would rather tell you that in the first week than in the third month.

This article is general information for support coordinators, participants and families, not legal or clinical advice. For the current rules, check ndis.gov.au or the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission.