SIL Practice Standards

Neither regulator asks whether the worker completed the training. The NDIS quality indicator says workers are TRAINED AND ASSESSED AS COMPETENT. The Aged Care Rules require services to be delivered by workers who ARE SKILLED AND COMPETENT IN THEIR ROLES. A completion percentage answers neither.

The module also separates the three layers of document in this subject - the Practice Standards, the quality indicators, and the Commission's guidance - because almost every later argument is really a disagreement about which layer somebody is quoting. Only the first two are law.

You leave knowing the register identifier and compilation number of every instrument the programme uses, and knowing what the programme will not do: it cannot tell you whether an arrangement is SIL, whether you must register, or whether a worker is competent.

Schedule 7A is shorter than anybody expects. Clause 5, practice governance, is two subclauses - and the sentence everybody quotes, 'trained and assessed as competent', is not in it. That is quality indicator s72D(3), in a different instrument.

The chain runs: the NDIS Act creates the machinery; the Provider Registration and Practice Standards Rules 2018 carry the four PRACTICE STANDARDS at Schedule 7A; the Quality Indicators Guidelines 2018 carry the twenty-five QUALITY INDICATORS at Part 8A, made under s181D(2) of the Act and commencing 1 July 2026; and the Commission publishes guidance about all of it.

You leave able to tell a standard from an indicator from a piece of guidance on sight, and able to use the mapping table at s72A - which pairs each set of indicators with its clause, so the instrument tells you where its own detail lives.

The test at Rules s7(5) has three limbs, and the third decides most real arrangements: whether the assistance includes THE MANAGEMENT OF THE PACKAGE by the person providing it.

The Commission's plain-English 'it is not SIL where a person chooses and manages their own support workers' is a gloss on that limb rather than a separate exclusion - so the question to ask is not how many hours, and not what kind of housing. It is who manages the package.

You also get the two new classes - 0137 digital platform service and 0138 supported independent living - both limbs of the s5A platform test, the 1 July and 1 October 2026 dates, and the penalty stated the way this programme always states penalties: 2 years imprisonment, 120 penalty units, or both, never converted to dollars.

s72B(5) is the only indicator in the whole module that names refresher training - and it states no interval at all. So the cycle is the provider's to set and to justify, and any course that tells you the instrument requires annual refreshers has invented an obligation.

The standard itself is two subclauses. The work is in the five indicators, and s72B(4) is unusually useful: it does not say 'have a policy', it sets out SIX things the policy must require of workers, at paragraphs (a) to (f). It is a checklist already written, and paragraph (a) - a reasonable period - is the one nobody has resourced.

You leave able to tell supported decision-making apart from clear communication, which is what most workers have actually been trained in.

s72C(7) requires safeguarding approaches to address conflict, intimidation and harm BETWEEN PARTICIPANTS. Almost all safeguarding training is built around harm to a participant by a worker, and misses this indicator entirely.

Eight indicators, the largest set in the module. s72C(3) names three training practices in one sentence - de-escalation, trauma-informed practice and positive behaviour support - and an auditor can search your catalogue for each of them by name. s72C(1) asks workers to DEMONSTRATE compliance with the NDIS Code of Conduct, not to be aware of it.

And the hardest sentence in the section: s72C(2) requires safeguarding approaches to be understood and applied consistently by ALL WORKERS in the participant's home. For a provider using casual or agency staff that is a workforce design problem as much as a training one.

This is the module the programme is named after, and it turns on six words that are not in the standard. Schedule 7A clause 5 is two subclauses about workers having the necessary training, knowledge and skills. The words 'assessed as competent' appear nowhere in it. They are quality indicator s72D(3).

That indicator names four practices - person-centred and trauma-informed practices, active support and supported decision-making - and introduces them with the word INCLUDING, so the list is not closed. What it does not name is a method: nothing in either instrument prescribes how competence is assessed, which makes the design yours and Module 09 the place it is done.

You also get s72D(1), where EVALUATION of your training is an obligation in its own right, and s72D(5) and (6), which reach into who a participant lives with and whether emergency arrangements have actually been REHEARSED.

No limits on a participant's access or possessions unless there is a behaviour support plan in place - and then only in the LEAST RESTRICTIVE way possible. s72E(5)(f). In an ordinary shared home that reaches a locked pantry, a remote control kept at the staff desk, a phone charger signed in and out.

Where a provider delivers both SIL and tenancy, the agreements must be SEPARATE and the participant supported to understand that they are legally separate and that one is not contingent on the other - because a participant who believes changing their support provider will cost them their home is not exercising choice and control, whatever the paperwork says. s72E(5)(c) gives them an express right to change the provider during the tenancy.

And a duty most training misses: s72E(2) requires WORKERS to refer participants to independent advocacy or legal assistance. That has to be in a policy and it has to be trained.

They are not evenly weighted, and the weighting tells a training designer where to spend. Trauma-informed practice is named in THREE indicators - more than anything else in the module. Positive behaviour support in two. Active support in exactly one, and that one is the 'trained and assessed as competent' indicator, which makes it the practice most clearly required to be ASSESSED rather than merely delivered.

The module also separates two things most people use interchangeably: positive behaviour support is a planned, person-specific approach, and de-escalation is what a worker does in the moment. Both are named, separately. Train only one and you have covered half the indicator.

You leave with the cheapest compliance decision in the programme - name your modules after the words the instrument uses, because an auditor can search a catalogue by name - with one caution attached: renaming only helps where the content actually covers the practice.

The famous aged care training list - dementia, medical emergencies, the Serious Incident Response Scheme and the rest - appears NOWHERE in the Aged Care Rules 2025. The legislative obligation is s15-15, Outcome 2.9, at subsections (15) and (16): workers who are SKILLED AND COMPETENT in their roles, and training and supervision to enable them to effectively perform those roles. That is the whole of it.

Both halves of that matter. The list is not the obligation, so citing it as one is wrong - and it is exactly what an assessor will look for, so ignoring it invites a finding you will struggle to answer. 'Action 2.9.6' is guidance numbering, not a citation.

The module also covers Act s152, which makes worker screening, training requirements and GIVING WORKERS OPPORTUNITIES TO DEVELOP THEIR CAPABILITY conditions of registration - and it states plainly what this programme will not tell you about the content of the screening requirements, because it has not verified them.

An assessment that cannot record NOT YET COMPETENT is not an assessment. If every worker who is assessed passes, the instrument is measuring attendance - and an auditor looking for evidence of assessment will look for the cases where the answer was no, and for what you did about them.

No method is prescribed anywhere in either instrument, which is a design brief rather than a gap. The module compares five methods against what each actually establishes, and then sets out the eight fields an assessment record needs - including criteria written BEFORE the assessment, and what happened next where the outcome was not yet competent.

You leave able to design something proportionate: observation where the practice suits it, scenario assessment where a response cannot be scheduled, and supervision records evidencing a distinct obligation rather than standing in for assessment.

Ten of the twenty-five indicators name a worker obligation. Those are the lines your evidence map has to have. One line each: what it requires, which training covers it, how competence is assessed, where the record lives, and the cycle.

Build the s72D(3) line first. Columns one to three are usually easy; columns four and five - assessment, and record - are where most organisations stop, and that stopping point is the finding. Much better discovered at your own desk than in an audit.

The module ends on Monday: ten things to check with the citation already attached, and twelve questions this programme cannot answer because the answers are in your own registration, policies and records.

Two assessments, and the case studies are where most of the learning is.

FIVE UNFOLDING CASE STUDIES with twenty-five decision points, and feedback on every option including the plausible wrong ones. One opens on a provider whose evidence answers the wrong question; another on a policy with two attribution errors in its first sentence; another on a locked pantry with no behaviour support plan behind it.

THE SUMMATIVE ASSESSMENT is 60 items, 80 per cent to pass, two attempts. Twenty of the items carry a MANDATORY-CORRECT statement - a citation that is widely got wrong, or a distinction that prevents a provider building its workforce evidence on the wrong thing.

Nothing is timed. You may stop and come back.

Five optional tools. Nothing you choose leaves your browser, nothing is reported, and this time is not counted in the claimable CPD hours.

Sort fourteen requirements to the layer that carries them. Sort twelve pieces of evidence by what each actually establishes. Sort twelve questions to the indicator that answers them. Sort ten facts to the limb of s7(5) they go to. And see which obligations attach to your own role.

Two of them deliberately withhold a verdict. 'Is it SIL?' sorts facts to limbs rather than classifying arrangements, and 'Which Indicator Governs?' sorts questions to sections rather than answering them about your service - because a tool keyed to either would be teaching you to do the thing the programme says it cannot do.

Four tools for use at your own organisation. They are learning tools, not employment records, and none of them replaces your own forms.

The COMPETENCY ASSESSMENT RECORD carries the eight fields an assessment needs - including criteria dated before the assessment, and a section for the outcome NOT YET COMPETENT and what followed it. The EVIDENCE MAP gives you a line for each of the ten indicators that name a worker obligation. The CITATION CARD is six questions ending in a citation somebody else can check. And the WORKED EXAMPLE takes one provider through one practice to one record.

No names and no identifiers, anywhere in any of them.

The things to keep.

The STUDENT WORKBOOK is your CPD evidence, and it ends on the twelve questions whose answers are in your own organisation. The SCOPE SELF-CHECK shows which obligations attach to your role and on what condition - read the condition rather than the verdict. The INSTRUMENT AND OBLIGATION MAPPING sets out the four standards with their indicator sections and counts, next to the two aged care subsections.

Two identifiers do most of the work and both are free on the Federal Register of Legislation: F2018L00631 for the Rules that carry Schedule 7A, and F2026N00443 for the amending instrument that inserted Part 8A. The register is the only place that tells you which compilation you are reading.