How to Complete a Self-Assessment Against the NDIS SIL Practice Standards

The SIL Practice Standards now apply to providers of Supported Independent Living, and completing a thorough self-assessment is a good initial preparation step. In short, you work through each quality indicator under the four standards, summarise the evidence you already have, rate how well you meet it, and identify (if anything) what else you need.

The four standards are Supported Decision-Making, Safeguarding, Practice Governance, and Agreements about tenancy, housing and support arrangements. SIL providers will be audited on both the new standards and the existing Core Module.

How to approach the self-assessment

The method is the same as any NDIS self-assessment, and my previous guide to the NDIS self-assessment is a good starter: for each indicator, look for the links between your policy, your actual practice, and the evidence that proves the practice happens.

What’s different about the SIL standards is how much they expect you to show practice (which is a good change). These standards were built around participant outcomes, not service-delivery processes, so provider who has relied on a strong policy library without being able to show it changes anything in the participant’s home may find this more challenging. The Practice Governance standard says this directly: your workforce systems have to be translating into consistent, observable practice in the home. So as you self-assess, yes a policy is needed, but rarely will be enough on its own. You’re looking for the records, the training that’s been assessed as effective, and what your workers and participants would actually say if an auditor asked them.

The rest of this article goes through what each standard is testing and the kind of evidence that demonstrates it.

Supported Decision-Making

The outcome: each participant is supported to understand and make genuine decisions for themselves about their home and daily life, with accessible information and decision-making support.

The core of this standard is that decisions are made by the participant, not for them by support workers. An auditor will want to see that you provide information in the participant’s own language and mode of communication, that you give them the time and support to weigh up options, and that you support their dignity of risk when a choice might be risky. Useful evidence includes a supported decision-making policy and procedure, the communication tools you actually use, records showing a participant was supported through a real decision, and training records showing workers have been trained (and refreshed) in supported decision-making.

The standard also expects you to uphold the participant’s will and preference even when it conflicts with what the provider or a decision-supporter would prefer, so have a process for that, and don’t treat a nominee or guardian’s decision as a substitute for supporting the participant’s own.

Safeguarding

The outcome: each participant lives in a safe, respectful and supportive home, with safeguards that mitigate harm both at home and when they access the community.

This standard explicitly includes the risks that arise between people who share a home. You’ll need processes to identify, assess and respond to harm, bullying and conflict between co-tenants quickly, and that you do it while still respecting each participant’s autonomy and dignity of risk. Evidence can include safeguarding policies that balance dignity of risk against safety, records of how you’ve managed specific risks in a house, and training records showing workers are trained in de-escalation, trauma-informed practice and positive behaviour support.

Don’t treat safeguarding here as generic workplace health and safety, but focus on the relationship-based, between-participants risks. If your evidence is all about slips, trips and fire exits and limited in regards to managing conflict between the people living in the home, there’s a gap.

Practice Governance

The outcome: each participant is supported by workers who have the training, knowledge and skills to support them, using evidence-informed practices tailored to their needs.

This is the standard most focused on whether good practice is consistent across workers and shifts. Workers need to be trained and assessed as competent in person-centred practice, trauma-informed practice, active support and supported decision-making, not just to have attended a session. Evidence includes your worker development and training policies, competency assessment records, supervision and mentoring records, cultural safety and positive behaviour support training, and your governance of emergency planning in shared living. This includes ensuring that arrangements are rehearsed and tailored to each participant.

Evidence of training that’s been delivered but never assessed for competence won’t be sufficient here.

This standard also expects participants to be consulted about who they live with, so keep records of co-tenant matching and the consultation before a new person moves into a home.

Agreements about tenancy, housing and support arrangements

The outcome: each participant understands how their tenancy agreement and their service agreement interact, is supported by effective tenancy management, and can exercise choice and control over both.

Where you provide both the housing and the SIL support, the standard requires separate service and tenancy agreements, and requires you to support the participant to understand that the two are legally separate and that one is not contingent on the other. In practice this means a participant can change their SIL provider without putting their housing at risk, and you need to show you’ve taken reasonable steps to protect them from being disadvantaged if they choose to do so.

Evidence includes the two separate agreements, a conflict-of-interest policy that’s made accessible to participants, records showing participants understand the distinction and their right to change provider, and your processes for things the standard names specifically: access to house keys and private space, having visitors, filling vacancies with the participant’s needs taken into account, and applying any limits in the least restrictive way and in line with a behaviour support plan where one exists.

Make sure you aren’t relying on a single bundled agreement that ties the participant’s housing to their support, and have evidence ready that the participant understands they can leave the support arrangement without losing their home. Because the provider is often both the landlord and the support provider, managing that conflict of interest is central to meeting this standard.

Recording what you find

For each indicator, the practical structure is three parts:

Current evidence. Name the specific documents, records and practices that show you meet the indicator. Be specific, e.g. a named policy, a particular register, or the training records for a named course.

A rating. Met, some work required, or no evidence in place. Rate honestly (or the exercise is a waste of time). An auditor is always going to view a provider who can find their own gaps more favourably than one who claims full compliance and can’t back it up.

Improvement actions. For anything below that isn’t rated ‘Met’, write down what you’ll do and by when, and who is responsible.

For the kind of evidence that demonstrates each indicator, and where it comes from in an audit, see our guide to the NDIS audit evidence requirements for the new SIL standards. For the registration side of the 1 July 2026 changes, see NDIS registration for SIL providers.