Supported Independent Living in South Australia

SIL pays for the support, not the house

Supported Independent Living is the NDIS line item that pays for support workers to help you at home. It is the most common form of disability housing support and the one most often confused with something else: SDA, Specialist Disability Accommodation, which pays for the building rather than the people in it.

The distinction decides what you can ask for. If you have SIL funding, a provider can staff a home — one of ours, or one you already live in. SDA is a separate line item, only a small proportion of participants are eligible for it, and it never provides support on its own: an SDA dwelling is always paired with SIL, because the building does not help anyone out of bed.

ResicareSA is a registered NDIS provider and Supported Independent Living is one of the registration groups we hold. That matters if your plan is NDIA-managed, because an NDIA-managed plan can only be spent with registered providers.

• SIL funds the people — daily living, personal care, overnight support and 24/7 active support
• SDA funds the dwelling — hoists, reinforced walls, accessible bathrooms and other design features
• Most people who need help at home have SIL and nothing else
• SIL can be delivered in one of our homes or in a home you already live in

How a SIL quote is actually built

There is no price list for SIL, and any provider quoting you one before meeting the household is guessing. A SIL quote is built from the roster the house actually needs, and three things drive it: how many support hours the household needs across a week, how many people are sharing those hours, and whether the nights are sleepover or active.

That last one is the difference between a worker sleeping in the house and available if needed, and a worker awake and working through the night. It changes the cost of a plan substantially, and it is decided by what a person actually needs at 3am rather than by what is cheapest to quote.

We build the quote with you and your support coordinator before anything is agreed, so you can see what is being claimed and why. Rosters are then reviewed with the household — if support needs go up or down, the quote is adjusted at your next plan review, or sooner if it cannot wait.

• Total support hours the household needs across the week
• How many residents share those hours — a ratio, not a flat rate
• Sleepover nights or active overnight support
• Reviewed with the household and adjusted at plan review

Our SIL homes across South Australia

We currently support 19 homes. Twelve are across metropolitan Adelaide and four are on the Yorke Peninsula, with one each in the Adelaide Hills, on the Eyre Peninsula, and in the Flinders Ranges and Outback. Regional placements are worth asking about specifically — most providers concentrate in the metro area, and a participant who wants to stay near family in a regional town often finds there is nothing available.

Each home lists what it offers, how many residents it supports, and whether it currently has a vacancy. Availability changes, so a home listed as full is still worth an enquiry if it is the right fit — we will tell you honestly whether a place is likely.

• 12 homes across metropolitan Adelaide
• 4 on the Yorke Peninsula, 1 on the Eyre Peninsula
• 1 in the Flinders Ranges and Outback, 1 in the Adelaide Hills
• Vacancies and design categories are published per home, not on request

Who supports you, and why we do not use agency staff

Support in our homes is delivered by ResicareSA support workers on a fixed roster, with 24/7 on-call backup. We employ them ourselves rather than booking agency shifts, which is a deliberate cost we carry: consistency is most of the job in SIL, and a household that sees a different face every shift does not get supported well no matter how good each individual worker is.

The staffing ratio is set with the household rather than applied as a standard, and it is funded through each resident's SIL quote. Where a participant has a Positive Behaviour Support Plan, our workers are trained on that specific plan before they work a shift in that house.

Moving in, and how placement works

Nobody moves into a shared home without meeting the people already living in it. We arrange a compatibility meet before any move-in, and the existing residents have a say in the outcome — they live there, and a placement that suits a referral but not the household is a placement that fails within months.

We do not publish identifying details about people currently living in our homes. If you want to know whether a house is a good fit, the conversation happens in the compatibility meet, not on a public listing.

What we do not do

Registration is a scope rather than a badge, and being straight about its edges saves a wasted referral.

We are not behaviour support practitioners. We do not assess behaviour and we do not write Positive Behaviour Support Plans. Where a participant has a plan written by an authorised practitioner, we implement it — our workers are trained on it, and we stay in contact with the practitioner and the coordinator so support stays consistent. That is a different thing from providing behaviour support, and providers are not always clear about the difference.

We do not provide early childhood supports, and we do not manage anyone's plan or finances beyond the day-to-day money handling that is part of daily living support.