From 1 July 2026, supported independent living needs a registered provider behind you. A few hours of everyday support in someone's own home doesn't.
If that's you, here it is straight: what's changing in group homes, what it means for your job, and the door that stays open.
1. What actually changes on 1 July 2026
Supported independent living — SIL, which is the funding behind a group home or a shared house — becomes a registered-provider service. From 1 July 2026, anyone delivering SIL must be registered with the NDIS Commission. A provider already delivering it can keep operating while its application is processed, but only if it applies by 1 October 2026. If it doesn't apply, it has to stop delivering SIL — and doing it without registration is a serious offence.
The Commission's own transition pathway names "unregistered NDIS provider, including sole traders" as a group that has to register. So the practical version for you is: your employer registers, or you register yourself — or that shift stops being available.
2. The Cert III question, answered honestly
You may have heard "you'll need a Cert III for SIL now". That isn't quite the law. What the new SIL Practice Standards require is that the provider has a trained, competent workforce and can show it — workers with the knowledge and skills the support needs, and records to prove it. Cert III is never named in the standards.
In practice it lands on you anyway: a registered provider being audited wants certificates in its training register, so a Cert III or an equivalent becomes the entry ticket to SIL work. If SIL is where you want to stay, it's worth asking your employer now what they're going to require.
Everyday support — the non-SIL lane — has no qualification requirement at all. What it needs is the paperwork: first aid, a police check, public liability insurance and an ABN. An NDIS Worker Screening Check isn't legally required of an unregistered sole trader — the Commission recommends it rather than mandating it — but it's what plan managers and participants ask for, and if you're working in group homes now you already hold one.
3. The lane that stays open — in the Commission's own words
Here's the part I'd want you to know. The Commission defines SIL, and it also says what is not SIL:
- "a person only receives a few hours of support a day or week", or
- "a person chooses and manages their own support workers (this includes directing, planning and rostering their own support workers)".
That's the work a sole trader can keep doing: a few hours a week with people who roster their own workers — self-managed and plan-managed participants, and private clients who simply pay you. No registration, no audit, and no qualification required to start.
4. The money
Household tasks bill at $60.10 an hour on the published 2026–27 schedule, and community and social participation at $73.58 on a weekday. That's gross, before your own costs — insurance, tax, travel, super and your own unpaid admin. But it's billed by you rather than paid to you as a wage, and a few hours a week adds up. And note which numbers are which: those are the everyday support figures — household tasks, and community and social participation. Personal care is a separate group of funded items, priced separately: self-care bills at $73.58 on a weekday daytime and $103.54 on a Saturday. If you hold a Cert III in Individual Support, that's work you're already qualified for — it needs its own insurance, and it sits outside the everyday-support business I teach.