Lydia
SIL, Supported Independent Living.
Hello again. If you haven't seen me in a previous chapter of this workshop, my name is Lydia and I'm from the housing hub team at the Summer Foundation. There are many ways that you can get support delivered to you. Supported Independent Living, or SIL is one option to pay for the people who support you. In the last chapter we talked about SDA. SDA is the housing and SIL is the type of support. We are going to talk to you about what SIL is, the role of a SIL provider versus the role of an SDA provider, conflicts of interest and how SIL is quoted.
SIL is assistance from paid support workers at home for people who need very high levels of person to person support, and access to person to person support all the time, 24 hours per day. When people talk about SIL, they usually mean some or all of the support will be shared with at least one other person and often more. A common arrangement is two to four people living together in the same home with support workers that are always available. It's important to remember that SIL can be delivered in a range of housing models, and that housing and support is best when it is provided by separate organisations. You can have a situation where one person with SIL or five to six people living in their own individual properties, all close by, sharing the SIL if this is what you prefer.
You can live in an SDA property and have SIL supports in that property. Your SIL provider and SDA provider should be separate. You have the right to choice and control, and your NDIS supports should not be limited by your choice of specialist, disability, accommodation, property or provider. Sometimes people refer to a group home or shared supported accommodation as a SIL home because that's the form of support available in the home. But this is confusing because SIL describes the support and doesn't have anything to do with the type of housing. The roles of a SIL provider and an SDA provider are very different.
A SIL provider provides support in your home for your personal care and day to day tasks, like cooking, and manages the staff who work with you. An SDA provider owns the home and is who you pay the rent to. They also fix and maintain the property. Sometimes the SIL provider is also the SDA provider. This is often true for an SDA property that was built before the NDIS rollout happened in 2013. You have the right to choice and control and your NDIS supports should not be limited by your choice of specialist, disability, accommodation, property, or provider. The NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission has practise standards that say what SDA providers must do and how they must manage and record conflicts of interest.
Conflicts of interest means an individual or group must answer to two different individuals or groups whose needs are at odds with each other. Your lease agreement and your service agreement should be separate even if they are from the same organisation. The lease agreement is about your home. It will spell out the details of your lease, how much rent you will pay and who is responsible for damages and utilities. Your service agreement is about your supports. It will spell out the terms and conditions of your supports you receive from your SIL provider. SIL providers and SDA providers sometimes have collaboration agreements between each other. These agreements outline the roles and responsibilities of each party and can include things like how the SDA provider will work with the SIL provider, how behaviours of concern will be managed, how vacancies in the SDA property will be managed, how your concerns or complaints will be given to the SDA provider.
Agreements between your SIL and SDA providers aren't allowed to limit your choices or reduce the level of control that you have over your supports. Remember you have full choice over which providers you choose for your support. After you have chosen your SIL provider, they give you a quote for how much providing you with support will cost to the NDIS. There are two key documents a SIL provider has to include when they send their SIL quote to the NDIS. The roster of care submission template. This used to be called the participant profile. And the roster of care spreadsheet. Your SIL provider should talk to you or the person you have chosen to decide for you about what's in these documents for you to approve before they get sent to the NDIS.
There will be some goals in your roster of care submission. These are not the same as your NDIS plan goals. They are the things that you'd like to achieve with your person to person seal supports. These might be things like I would like to dress myself, or I would like to cook a roast dinner for my co-tenants. You can talk to your SIL provider about you want to achieve and how they will help you to achieve these. This document will also talk about your support needs. It will refer to any other reports or information you might have. This will show the NDIS why you need support at the specific times. It will also show when you need support just for you, or when you can share with others you may be living with. This document gives the information that backs up the roster of care spreadsheet that the supervisors had complaints for the SIL arrangement.
Your roster of care should show how many support staff you need and any housemates need. This is called your support ratio. Your roster of care should also list the times and days you need the support. It will also list times when you don't need SIL supports. This includes time spent with family or friends, on holidays, at work or time spent at a day programme. If you share support with other people, your provider will look at everyone's needs and make sure the roster of care works for everyone. Remember, you have to right to see your roster of care and approve the roster of care before it goes to the NDIS. You have the right to know what your funding is paying for in terms of the SIL arrangement and make sure you receive the right amount of support. You also have a right to use a combination of support providers. Not all your core funding has to go to your SIL provider.
You can watch Belinda's story about the support arrangements in place in her SDA property and Jonno's story about his experience with supported independent living. In the next chapter, we will talk about individual living options.