Guide
How clinical governance works in our homes
The checks behind every roster, from nurse-led plans and behaviour support to restrictive practices and incident reporting.
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Supported Independent Living · Guide
More than a place to live
Why belonging takes deliberate work, and how we build community into everyday support.
A person can be safe, clean, fed, medicated and still be lonely. Belonging takes deliberate work, and it is work we take seriously.
In Australia, around 19% of working-age people with disability experience social isolation, compared with 9.5% of people without disability. Some 29% report loneliness, against 17% of people without disability. Australian research across two decades found that gap has not narrowed at all, while loneliness in the general population fell.
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, People with disability in Australia
Social isolation carries a mortality risk comparable to well-established health risk factors. So it is something we plan for deliberately.
A community plan as well as a support plan
Who are your people? What do you want to be part of? What would you contribute if someone made it possible?
Support workers help build connections
Their role is to help you build relationships that are not paid for, rather than to be your only company: a regular at the same café, a face at the same market, a spot in the same choir.
Getting to know the neighbourhood
We map what is already in the Inner West: groups, clubs, venues, volunteering, small businesses. Then we invest in those relationships so they are there when someone needs them.
Active support, every day
People are supported to take part in the real tasks of their own home and their own life, the shopping, the cooking, the folding, the paying, with exactly as much help as success requires and not a fraction more. The international evidence for this is strong: it substantially lifts engagement, the quality of staff support, and people’s exercise of choice.
Thinking in terms of citizenship
We think in terms of the things Simon Duffy’s Keys to Citizenship names: purpose, freedom, money, home, help, life and love. We use that frame because meeting someone’s support needs is the floor we start from, not the goal we aim at.
The Disability Royal Commission made this explicit. It recommended strengthening how providers implement models of practice such as Active Support, so that people living in group homes are actively supported to have greater social interaction, community participation and inclusion. We treat that as the standard to work to.
Last reviewed 17 September 2026 by Steven Lowrie, Governance and Case Management Lead. Rules and funding can change. If something here does not match your situation, ask us.
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Keep reading
More about Supported Independent Living
Guide
Our approach to positive behaviour support
Why behaviours of concern are communication, how we work out what is behind them, and how we measure progress.
Guide
Working alongside families
How we support the families of the people who live in our homes, and how what they know shapes the plan.
Guide
Small homes on ordinary streets
How our homes are set up, from choosing who you live with to rosters written around your day.
Guide
What SIL funds, and what it does not
A plain list of what Supported Independent Living pays for, what it does not, and a recent change to rosters of care.
Common questions
Supported Independent Living: common questions
Answers about restrictive practices, staffing ratios, housing, moving in, and where we work.
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