SCHADS Award (SCHADS)

What is the SCHADS Award?

The SCHADS Award is the Social, Community, Home Care and Disability Services Industry Award 2010 (MA000100), the modern award that sets minimum pay and conditions for most people employed by disability, community services and home care providers in Australia. It decides a worker's classification level and pay point, their penalty rates, overtime and allowances, and rostering rules such as minimum shift payments and breaks between shifts. If an enterprise agreement covers the staff, the agreement applies instead, but its base rates can't be lower than the award's.

For NDIS providers, the SCHADS Award is the rulebook behind every timesheet. An NDIS support worker employed by a provider is almost always covered by it, whether they work in a group home, deliver Supported Independent Living (SIL), run community access or support someone in their own home. Independent contractors and sole traders are not employees, so the award does not set their rates.

People search "SCHADS" for three different reasons:

• Workers want to know their level, their hourly rate and whether a shift was paid correctly.
• Providers need to classify staff, build compliant rosters and run payroll without underpaying.
• Participants and families sometimes want to understand why a weekend or public holiday shift costs more, which traces back to award penalty rates and the NDIS price limits that allow for them.

How the SCHADS Award works

The award text is published by the Fair Work Commission as the consolidated MA000100 award. It expresses minimum rates as weekly amounts for a 38-hour full-time week. The base hourly rate is the weekly rate divided by 38, and part-time employees get that same hourly rate for the hours they work. Casual employees get the base hourly rate plus a 25% casual loading, paid instead of entitlements such as paid annual and personal leave.

Every other figure is built on that base. Weekend rates, public holiday rates, shift loadings and overtime are all whole-number percentages of the base hourly rate. Allowances such as the sleepover and broken shift allowances are flat amounts set as a percentage of the award's "standard rate", which the award defines as the Level 3 pay point 3 weekly rate. The Fair Work Ombudsman turns all of this into dollar figures in its MA000100 pay guide; the current figures are also in the free SCHADS pay rates table.

Streams: SACS, home care and crisis accommodation

The award has separate classification schedules, each with its own pay table. The stream depends on the work the employee does and where they do it, not on how the provider is registered or how the participant's plan is managed.

• Social and community services (SACS), Schedule B: most disability support in group homes, SIL, day programs and community access. Eight levels.
• Home care – disability care, Schedule E: personal care, domestic assistance or home maintenance for a person with a disability in a private residence. Five levels.
• Crisis accommodation: refuges and emergency housing.

The award also has aged care home care and family day care schedules, which most NDIS providers don't use. If a worker does more than one kind of work, the award says they fall under the classification that best fits the work they perform and the environment they usually work in.

The Equal Remuneration Order

If you read clause 15 of the award, the SACS weekly rates look much lower than the pay guide. That's because an Equal Remuneration Order (ERO), made in 2012 to address gender-based undervaluation in social and community services, applies on top. The final ERO percentages range from 123% at Level 2 to 145% at Level 8 (Level 1 has no uplift), and the award says the ERO rates are the employee's ordinary rate for all purposes. The pay guide's SACS and crisis accommodation rates already include the ERO, so don't add it again. It does not apply to home care employees.

SCHADS levels: what Level 2 and Level 3 mean

Each SACS level is defined in Schedule B by the employee's level of supervision, judgement and responsibility, with typical duties and qualifications. Job titles don't decide the level; the duties the person actually performs do. Levels 1 to 3 cover most frontline disability work, and Levels 4 to 8 cover specialist, coordination and management roles.

SCHADS Level 2 is the usual level for disability support workers. A relevant certificate places a worker here: a Certificate III worker is generally Level 2 pay point 1, an appropriate Certificate IV starts no lower than pay point 2, and a diploma holder doing related work starts at pay point 2 (clauses B.2.1(e) and (f)). A Certificate IV worker who allocates work and helps with rostering can still be Level 2.

SCHADS Level 3 is usually the team leader or house supervisor level. The clearest marker in disability services is overall responsibility for residents' personal care plus training, coordinating and supervising other employees and scheduling work, and a Level 3 supervisor may manage the day-to-day operations of a group home. Graduates with a relevant three-year degree start at Level 3 pay point 3, and four-year graduates at pay point 4. A diploma alone does not make someone Level 3.

Within a level, clause 13.3 lets an employee move up one pay point after each 12 months of continuous employment if they have shown competency and satisfactory performance. Moving to a higher level only happens by promotion or reclassification. Clause 13.2 requires employers to tell employees their classification in writing when they start and whenever it changes.

Home care uses a different structure: a Certificate III worker is Level 2 pay point 1 in SACS but Level 3 pay point 1 in the home care disability schedule.

Penalty rates, overtime and allowances

The Fair Work Ombudsman's SCHADS pay and allowances page and the award set these percentages of the base hourly rate:

Two rules decide how they combine. Penalties don't stack with each other: weekend and public holiday rates replace afternoon and night loadings (clauses 26.2 and 34.2(b)), and overtime rates replace both (clause 28.1). The casual loading does stack, which is why a casual's Saturday rate is 175%, not 150%. Afternoon and night loadings only apply Monday to Friday, and they apply to the whole shift, not just the hours after 8pm or midnight.

For disability services work, overtime Monday to Saturday is 150% for the first 2 hours and 200% after that; Sunday overtime is 200% and public holiday overtime 250%. Part-time and casual employees are on overtime after 10 hours in a day or shift, or 38 hours in a week. A non-casual employee who works overtime and doesn't get 10 consecutive hours off before the next shift is paid double time until they get that break (clause 28.3).

The main allowances for NDIS work are:

• Sleepover: 4.9% of the standard rate for a continuous 8-hour sleepover at the client's premises. Work during it is paid at overtime rates, minimum 1 hour (clause 25.7).
• Broken shift: 1.7% of the standard rate for one unpaid break, 2.25% for two (clause 20.12). See broken shift.
• On call, vehicle (per kilometre when using your own car for work), meal (overtime), first aid and uniform and laundry allowances (clause 20).

To price a whole week of shifts line by line, use the SCHADS pay calculator.

Rostering rules in the SCHADS Award

Many underpayments start on the roster, not in payroll. The Fair Work Ombudsman's SCHADS hours of work guidance and the award set these rules that NDIS rostering has to respect:

• Minimum payment: part-time and casual employees doing disability services or home care work are paid at least 2 hours per shift or per broken-shift period. Other SACS work has a 3-hour minimum (clause 10.5).
• Breaks between shifts: at least 10 hours, or 8 hours by agreement either side of a shift attached to a sleepover (clause 25.4).
• Roster notice: rosters are posted at least two weeks ahead, and a change needs 7 days' notice unless it's an agreed swap or covers illness or an emergency (clause 25.5).
• Client cancellations: if a client cancels within 7 days, a full-time or part-time employee can be given other work, paid for the shift, or (with at least 12 hours' notice) offered make-up time within 6 weeks (clause 25.5(f)). Casuals are not covered by this clause.
• Days off: non-casual employees get at least two full days off each week, four each fortnight or eight in a 28-day cycle (clause 25.3).
• Breaks during the shift: a paid 10-minute tea break for each four hours worked, and an unpaid meal break after more than five hours unless the worker must eat with clients (clause 27).

SCHADS Award changes in 2026 and 2027

Rates change at least once a year. The Annual Wage Review 2026 increased modern award minimum wages by 4.75% from the first full pay period starting on or after 1 July 2026, and the Fair Work Ombudsman published an updated MA000100 pay guide on 18 September 2026.

The Fair Work Commission's gender-based undervaluation review is also changing the award. According to the Fair Work Ombudsman's summary of the changes, home care employees who provide disability care get an initial increase of up to 15% from the first full pay period on or after 1 December 2026. Most other changes, including a new classification structure, new progression rules and new minimum rates, start from the first full pay period on or after 1 October 2027. The level descriptions on this page will be replaced then, so providers should plan to remap every employee.

SCHADS Award vs other ways workers are paid

The award is a floor. How it interacts with other arrangements is a common source of confusion:

The award also sits alongside NDIS pricing, but they are separate systems. The award sets what an employer must pay a worker. The NDIS price limits set the most a registered provider can charge a participant for a support, and the NDIA's pricing model assumes award costs when it sets those limits. Participants don't pay award rates directly, and a provider can't charge more than the price limit just because the award cost went up.

Common SCHADS mistakes

• Classifying by title, not duties. A "support worker" who runs the house day to day and supervises others may be Level 3.
• Missed pay point progression. Nobody reviews the 12-month anniversary, so workers stay on pay point 1 for years.
• Short shifts paid as worked. A 45-minute visit is paid as 2 hours for part-time and casual disability workers.
• Stacking loadings. A Saturday night shift is 150% (175% casual), not 150% plus the 15% night loading.
• Adding the ERO twice, or loading clause 15 rates without it and underpaying every SACS worker from Level 2 up.
• Treating a sleepover as a break between two shifts, or paying disturbances at ordinary rates.
• Poor records. The Fair Work Ombudsman says employers must keep time and wages records for 7 years and give pay slips within one working day of pay day (record-keeping fact sheet). Since 1 January 2025, intentionally underpaying wages can be a criminal offence.