The SCHADS Award: a simple guide for NDIS providers

The Social, Community, Home Care and Disability Services (SCHADS) Award governs pay and conditions for most disability support workers in Australia. It's also one of the most common places NDIS providers get compliance wrong — the rules around overnight support, broken shifts and minimum engagements are genuinely fiddly. Here's a simple orientation.

Pay rates and allowances change (including through annual wage reviews). This guide explains the concepts; always confirm current dollar figures with the Fair Work Ombudsman.

Who SCHADS covers

SCHADS covers employees in social and community services, home care and disability services — which is where most NDIS support workers sit. Some roles (for example certain nursing or admin functions) may fall under different awards, so classification matters.

Classifications and ordinary hours

Workers are placed into a classification level based on their role, skills and responsibilities, which sets their base rate. "Ordinary hours" are the standard hours worked before penalties or overtime apply. Getting classification right is the foundation — everything else builds on it.

Penalty rates and overtime

On top of the base rate, workers can be entitled to penalty rates for evenings, weekends and public holidays, and overtime for hours beyond the ordinary span. The exact loadings depend on the day, time and employment type.

Overnight support: sleepovers vs active

This is a frequent source of underpayment:

• Sleepover (inactive overnight): the worker sleeps on-site to be available if needed. This attracts a sleepover allowance for the period, plus payment at the appropriate rate for any time they're woken to work.
• Active overnight support: the worker is awake and working through the night — this is paid as ordinary working time (with any applicable penalties), not as a sleepover.

Classifying an active night as a sleepover is a classic error that leads to back-pay claims.

Broken shifts

Disability support often involves broken shifts — a shift split into separate work periods with an unpaid gap in between. SCHADS provides a broken shift allowance to compensate for the disruption, with the amount depending on how many breaks are in the shift.

Minimum engagements and allowances

• Minimum engagement: the award sets a minimum number of hours you must pay for when you roster someone, which varies by employment type. Very short shifts below the minimum create risk.
• Allowances: there are also allowances for things like travel between clients, use of a personal vehicle, and certain qualifications or duties.

The compliance mistakes to avoid

1. Paying an active overnight as a sleepover.
2. Missing the broken shift allowance for split shifts.
3. Rostering below the minimum engagement period.
4. Forgetting travel time and vehicle allowances between participants.
5. Using old rates after a wage review.

Where Support Logic fits

Support Logic is trained on the SCHADS Award and Fair Work legislation, so your rostering and payroll team can ask "how should this shift be paid?" and get a clear, citation-backed explanation in seconds — a fast sanity check before an error becomes a back-pay bill. See how it works or compare plans.

The bottom line

SCHADS rewards providers who classify correctly, treat sleepovers and active nights differently, apply broken-shift and minimum-engagement rules, and always use current rates. When in doubt, check Fair Work — and use a tool that can explain the rule behind the number.

This guide is general information, not workplace-relations advice. Confirm current rates and obligations with the Fair Work Ombudsman.