SCHADS Award pay rates 2026–27.

The Social, Community, Home Care and Disability Services Industry Award 2010 (MA000100), usually called the SCHADS Award, sets the minimum pay and conditions for most employees of disability, community services and home care providers in Australia. If an enterprise agreement covers your staff, the agreement applies instead, but its base rates can't be lower than the award's.

Minimum rates change each year through the Fair Work Commission's annual wage review. The 2026 review increased modern award minimum wages by 4.75% from the first full pay period starting on or after 1 July 2026. The Fair Work Ombudsman then publishes a pay guide that turns the award's weekly rates into hourly, weekend, public holiday, shift and casual rates. The tables above come from the pay guide published 18 September 2026.

The award expresses rates as weekly amounts for a 38-hour full-time week. The hourly rate is the weekly rate divided by 38. So Level 2 pay point 1 is $1,376.49 a week, or $36.22 an hour. Part-timers get the same hourly rate for the hours they work. Casuals get the hourly rate plus a 25% loading.

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 the provider's registration or the funding source. If an employer is covered for more than one kind of work, clause 4.8 says the employee falls under the classification that best fits the work they perform and the environment they usually work in.

The award also has home care (aged care) and family day care schedules, which this page doesn't cover. Most NDIS providers employ support workers in the SACS stream. Providers whose staff mainly support participants in their own homes should check whether the home care disability schedule fits better, because its rates and level structure are different.

Each SACS level is defined in Schedule B by the employee's level of supervision, judgement and responsibility, plus typical duties and qualifications. Job titles don't decide the level. The duties the person actually performs do. Here is a plain-English summary with the 2026–27 pay point 1 rate for each level.

Levels 1 to 3 cover most frontline disability work. Level 1 is for new starters on routine tasks under close direction. Level 2 is the usual level for qualified support workers delivering personal care, community access and skills programs. Level 3 covers experienced workers who take overall responsibility for residents' care and supervise others, such as house or team leaders. Levels 4 to 8 are for specialist, coordination and management roles with increasing autonomy, ending with executive leadership of an organisation at Level 8.

Schedule B ties several qualifications to a minimum starting point. These are minimums: an employer can start someone higher, and experience can justify a higher level without a qualification. The work must be related to the qualification for the entry point to apply.

Within each level, pay points reward experience. Under clause 13.3, at the end of each 12 months' continuous employment, an employee is eligible to move to the next pay point if they have shown competency and satisfactory performance for at least 12 months and either:

• they have gained and used new or improved skills within the classification, if the employer requires it; or
• the employer runs a staff development and performance appraisal scheme and has found their performance satisfactory over the prior 12 months.

Pay point progression is not promotion. Moving to a higher level only happens through promotion or reclassification (clause 13.3(b)). There is one specific rule at Level 1: an employee mainly doing resident personal care or domestic duties under supervision moves to pay point 2 after 12 months' industry experience if full-time, or 1,976 hours if part-time. Level 1 employees doing the full range of domestic duties and helping residents with personal care under general supervision start no lower than pay point 2.

Clause 13.2 requires employers to tell employees their classification in writing when they start and when it changes. Keep this with the employment records, along with the date each pay point increase is due.

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 the social and community services sector, applies on top. The award's note to clause 15 sets out the final ERO rates and says they are the employees' ordinary rates of pay for all purposes, including penalties, overtime and leave. The ERO also applies to crisis accommodation employees, but not to home care employees.

All the SACS and crisis accommodation rates in the tables above already include the ERO. Don't add it again. Payroll systems that load clause 15 rates without the ERO will underpay every SACS employee from Level 2 up.

As part of its gender-based undervaluation review of priority awards, the Fair Work Commission has made changes to the SCHADS Award. Home care employees who provide disability care get an initial increase of up to 15% to their minimum award rates from the first full pay period starting on or after 1 December 2026. Any remaining increase applies from the first full pay period starting on or after 1 October 2027, and the Fair Work Ombudsman says the October 2027 rates will also include any change from the 2027 annual wage review.

Before 1 December 2026, the lower 1 July 2026 home care rates apply. If you're paying for an earlier period, check the pay guide for that period, or enter the earlier rate as a custom base rate in the SCHADS pay calculator. SACS and crisis accommodation rates don't change on 1 December 2026.

A casual's 25% loading is paid instead of entitlements casuals don't get under the award and the National Employment Standards, such as paid annual and personal leave. On weekends and public holidays the loading adds to the penalty: 175% on Saturday, 225% on Sunday and 275% on a public holiday.

Part-time employees must have a written agreement before they start that sets their guaranteed hours, the days they work and their start and finish times (clause 10.3). Both part-timers and casuals doing disability services or home care work must be paid at least 2 hours for each shift or each part of a broken shift (clause 10.5). Social and community services work outside disability services has a 3-hour minimum.

The sleepover allowance ($62.87) and the on-call and broken shift allowances are flat amounts set as a percentage of the "standard rate", which the award defines as the Level 3 pay point 3 weekly rate ($1,616.71). For how penalties, overtime, broken shifts and sleepovers add up across a real week, use the SCHADS pay calculator.

The October 2027 changes will replace the level structure described on this page. The Fair Work Ombudsman says it will publish more detail closer to the date. If you set pay rules in a payroll or rostering system, plan to review every employee's classification before then.

Award rates are also the starting point for pricing your services. Compare your wage cost per hour with the NDIS price limits in the NDIS price guide search, and build shared-living rosters with the SIL roster of care tool.