SCHADS Award guide for NDIS providers: classifications, penalties and allowances

The SCHADS Award (the Social, Community, Home Care and Disability Services Industry Award 2010, MA000100) sets minimum pay and conditions for most disability support workers employed by NDIS providers. It decides each worker's classification level and pay point. It also sets penalty rates for evenings, weekends and public holidays, when overtime starts, and allowances for sleepovers, broken shifts, on-call and vehicle use. It also has rostering rules such as the 2-hour minimum payment and the 10-hour break between shifts.

This guide covers the parts that matter for disability support payroll, with the clause numbers so you can check each rule in the current award text on the Fair Work Ombudsman website. Dollar amounts change at least once a year, so this guide gives percentages and rules. For the current figures, use the Fair Work MA000100 pay guide or the SCHADS pay rates table.

What the SCHADS Award covers (short answer)

SCHADS covers employers in the social and community services, crisis accommodation, family day care and home care sectors, and their employees in the award's classifications. For NDIS providers, two streams matter most:

• Social and community services (SACS), Schedule B. Most disability support workers in group homes, supported independent living (SIL), day programs and community access are classified here. SACS rates include the equal remuneration order (ERO) loading. The award says the ERO "current hourly wage" is the employee's ordinary rate for all purposes.
• Home care, Schedule E, now titled "Home care employees—disability care". This covers workers providing personal care, domestic assistance or home maintenance to a person with a disability in a private residence.

Some rules apply only to disability services work or home care, such as the broken shift clause and the 2-hour minimum payment. Others apply to everyone under the award. If you run a mix of services, such as SIL, in-home support and a community program, your workers may be under different streams depending on the work they do.

An enterprise agreement, if you have one, replaces the award for the employees it covers. The base rates in an agreement can't be lower than the award's. The rest of this guide assumes the award applies.

Changes to watch in 2026 and 2027

• From the first full pay period on or after 1 July 2026, award minimum wages rose by 4.75% under the Annual Wage Review 2026.
• From the first full pay period on or after 1 June 2026, variations to the award introduced a formal "wrap-around" arrangement for shifts either side of a sleepover (covered below).
• From the first full pay period on or after 1 December 2026, home care employees doing disability care receive an initial increase of up to 15%. Most other changes from the Fair Work Commission's gender undervaluation review start from 1 October 2027, including a new classification structure and new progression rules. See the Fair Work Ombudsman's summary of the changes.

Classification levels for disability work

The SACS stream has eight levels. Levels 1 to 3 have several pay points, and Levels 4 to 8 cover coordinators, managers and senior specialists. The classification definitions are in Schedule B of the award. Here is how they usually map to disability roles:

Within a level, the award (clause 13.3) lets an employee progress one pay point after each 12 months of continuous employment, if they have shown competency and satisfactory performance. Moving up a level only happens by promotion or reclassification.

Level 2 versus Level 3 is the most common area of dispute. Classify by the duties actually performed, not job titles.

Penalty rates and overtime

Penalties are percentages of the employee's ordinary hourly rate. Casual employees receive a 25% loading on the ordinary rate (clause 10.4), and the award and pay guide set casual penalty rates that include it.

Penalties don't stack. Weekend and public holiday rates replace shift loadings (clauses 26.2 and 34.2(b)). Overtime rates replace both (clause 28.1).

When overtime applies

• Full-time employees: work beyond rostered ordinary hours, and for day workers, work outside the 6am–8pm span. For disability services work, overtime Monday to Saturday is time and a half for the first 2 hours, then double time. It is double time on Sunday and double time and a half on a public holiday.
• Part-time and casual employees: work over 38 hours a week or 76 a fortnight, or over 10 hours in a day or shift. The limit is 12 hours if a wrap-around sleepover arrangement has been agreed. For part-time and casual day workers, work outside the span of hours is also overtime.
• Rest after overtime: an employee other than a casual who doesn't get 10 consecutive hours off after overtime is paid double time until they are released for that break (clause 28.3).

You can check a full week of shifts, penalties and overtime line by line in the SCHADS pay calculator.

Allowances, sleepovers and broken shifts

Several allowances are set as a percentage of the "standard rate", which is the Level 3, pay point 3 weekly rate. They move whenever that rate moves.

Two rules need care. A sleepover must be a continuous 8 hours with a separate room, bed and clean linen. Work immediately before and after it is treated as one shift, and at least one of those periods must be rostered or paid for 4 hours. A broken shift (disability services and home care only) must be completed within a 12-hour span. Work beyond the span is paid at double time, and each portion attracts the 2-hour minimum payment.

Rostering rules that affect pay

• Part-time and casual employees doing disability services work must be paid at least 2 hours for each shift or each portion of a broken shift (clause 10.5).
• Employees must get at least 10 hours off between shifts, or 8 hours by agreement around a sleepover (clause 25.4).
• Rosters must be posted at least two weeks ahead, and seven days' notice is needed to change them, with some exceptions (clause 25.5).
• If a client cancels within 7 days, you may redirect a full-time or part-time employee to other work or cancel the shift. If you cancel, you must either pay the shift or offer make-up time, and make-up time is only allowed with at least 12 hours' notice (clause 25.5(f)).

Common underpayment risks

1. Classifying by title, not duties. A "support worker" who runs the house day to day and supervises others may be Level 3.
2. Missed pay point progression. Nobody reviews the 12-month anniversary, so workers stay on pay point 1 for years.
3. Short visits paid as worked. A 45-minute visit still has to be paid as 2 hours for part-time and casual employees.
4. Sleepover disturbances paid at ordinary rates, or bundled into one total instead of applying the 1-hour minimum each time.
5. Broken shifts over the 12-hour span without double time, or without the allowance.
6. Part-time additional hours treated as ordinary time beyond 10 hours in a shift or 38 in a week.
7. Stacking or missing loadings, such as adding the night loading on top of the Saturday rate, or leaving out the afternoon loading on a 3pm–10pm weekday shift.
8. Rates not updated from the first full pay period on or after the effective date, including allowances that move with the standard rate.
9. Kilometres not recorded for travel between clients or client transport, so the vehicle allowance is never paid.

Underpayments usually come from rules applied inconsistently by hand, not from people not knowing the rule. Write your interpretation down once and apply it the same way every pay run.

How providers handle this in Suppora

Suppora turns clock-ins into timesheets and applies your SCHADS pay rules to each shift. Weekend and public holiday penalties, evening and night loadings, overtime, sleepovers and broken shifts are set up as rules your payroll admin can open and check. Kilometres, laundry, meals and other allowances are attached to the shift they belong to.

Workers can't change a timesheet once it's submitted. A coordinator checks and approves it, and approved timesheets go to Xero Payroll with the right earnings rates. Other payroll systems can take a timesheet export file. The SCHADS rules are a starting point, and you can adjust rates, cut-off times and export codes to match an enterprise agreement. Changes to pay rules are recorded in the audit log.