For Supported Independent Living (SIL) providers, sleepover shifts sit at the intersection of workforce management, participant safety, and some of the most complex provisions in the SCHADS Award. Despite being a daily operational reality for most SIL providers, sleepover compliance remains an area where underpayment is common.
Under the SCHADS Award, a sleepover is a period when an employee is required to remain at a workplace overnight to be available to provide support if required, but is not required to be awake and working during that period. The Award provides a sleepover allowance — a flat payment per sleepover period — in place of the usual hourly rates for the overnight period.
Critically, if a staff member is required to wake up and actively provide care during a sleepover, those active work periods must be paid at the applicable ordinary or penalty rate. The sleepover allowance does not cover active work hours.
When a participant requires assistance during a sleepover, the employee transitions from "on call and sleeping" to "actively working." The Award requires that each period of active work be recorded and paid at the correct rate. For SIL providers, you need a reliable mechanism to capture active hours — if your staff log interventions in a handover note or clinical record, that same log can serve as evidence of active work hours that should be paid.
The SCHADS Award imposes limits on how sleepover shifts can be constructed: an employee must not be required to perform ordinary work for longer than 8 hours before commencing a sleepover without appropriate rest breaks; and after a sleepover, the employee must have a minimum break before commencing their next ordinary shift. Roster managers must plan around these constraints.
NDIS SIL funding includes specific line items for active nights and sleepovers. A sleepover where the employee was not required to provide any active support should be claimed under the sleepover/overnight supervision rate. A night where the participant required several hours of active personal care is a different matter. Misclassifying these not only affects your funding but potentially misrepresents the level of support participants are receiving.
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