SIL and ILO are the two NDIS supports most often confused with each other, and the confusion is expensive: they fund different things, they are requested differently, and evidence written for one reads as weak evidence for the other. This guide explains the difference in plain English, and how to work out which one a person’s situation actually points to.
A note before the detail: whether either support is funded in an individual plan is decided by the NDIA against its reasonable and necessary criteria. Nothing here is a promise about any individual outcome. Your support coordinator or planner is the right person to guide your specific situation.
The one-sentence difference
SIL (Supported Independent Living) funds rostered support workers in a person’s home, up to 24 hours a day. ILO (Individualised Living Options) funds a living arrangement, built around who the person lives with and how informal and formal support fit together.
SIL answers the question “how many hours of paid support does this person need at home, and when?” ILO answers a different question: “what kind of living arrangement, with what mix of people and supports, would let this person live well?” Same goal, two genuinely different tools.
What SIL looks like in practice
SIL is most familiar in shared supported accommodation: two or three participants in a home, with support workers rostered across the day and sometimes overnight, shared between housemates at ratios such as 1:2 or 1:3. It can also fund support for a person living alone where the need justifies it. The defining feature is the roster: paid workers, scheduled hours, a defined pattern of support.
Because SIL can be one of the largest supports in a plan, the evidence bar is high. The functional assessment behind a SIL request has to establish the support need task by task and hour by hour, including the overnight question, which is where requests most often lack evidence. We cover this in detail on our SIL assessments page.
What ILO looks like in practice
ILO packages are deliberately varied, but common shapes include:
- Host arrangements, where a person lives with a household that provides agreed support alongside their own family life.
- Housemate arrangements, where a housemate provides agreed support, sometimes in exchange for reduced rent, alongside paid drop-in support.
- Living alone with a support network, where formal drop-in support is woven together with family, neighbours and technology.
The defining feature is design: an ILO is explored, designed and then supported, and the arrangement itself, who the person lives with and how the pieces fit, is the funded thing. Informal support is not an inconvenient gap in an ILO; it is part of the structure.
Six questions that point to one or the other
No checklist replaces proper assessment, but these questions usually reveal which road a situation is on:
- Is the core need a volume of hands-on support? Consistent, substantial daily physical or supervision support points towards SIL.
- Is the core question who the person lives with? Where the right housemate or host would change everything, that is ILO territory.
- How stable is the informal network? ILO builds on informal support, so it needs a network that can genuinely sustain a role. Where there is none, SIL carries more of the weight.
- Does the person want to share with other participants? SIL often happens in shared arrangements with housemates the person did not choose. ILO exists partly to offer an alternative to exactly that.
- How predictable is the support need? Rosters suit predictable patterns. Needs that flex day to day can sit more naturally inside a designed arrangement with flexible supports.
- What does the evidence actually show? A proper functional assessment sometimes points somewhere neither the family nor the coordinator expected, and following it is cheaper than fighting it.
Why the distinction matters for evidence
A SIL request stands on evidence of support need: what the person cannot do without help, when, and at what ratio. An ILO exploration stands on evidence about the person’s life: their capacity, their network, their preferences, and what arrangement could hold. An occupational therapy assessment feeds both, but it has to be written knowing which question it is answering, which is why “just get an OT report” briefs produce reports that stall requests.
It is also common for the honest answer to change over time: a young person might begin in an ILO host arrangement and move towards SIL as needs increase, or start in SIL and step down to an ILO as capacity builds. Good evidence names the trajectory, not just the snapshot.
Where they sit in the bigger home and living picture
SIL and ILO are two of five NDIS home and living supports, alongside SDA (the dwelling itself), MTA (interim accommodation) and STA (short stays and respite). Requests most often stall because the wrong support was requested, so it is worth understanding the whole map before committing to a request. We keep the full picture on our NDIS home and living assessments hub, and the SIL-versus-SDA distinction, a different and equally common confusion, on our SIL and SDA comparison page.
Frequently asked questions
Can a person have both SIL and ILO?
They answer the same underlying need in different ways, so they are alternatives rather than companions: a person’s home and living support is generally structured as one or the other. What does happen is movement between them over time as needs and circumstances change.
Is ILO cheaper than SIL?
Not automatically, and choosing on price is the wrong frame. Funding in both cases reflects the person’s assessed need; what differs is how the support is structured. The right question is which arrangement fits the person’s life and network, evidenced properly.
Who decides which one is funded?
The NDIA, against its reasonable and necessary criteria, based on the request and the evidence behind it. That is exactly why the evidence should honestly point at the arrangement that fits, rather than being written backwards from a preferred answer.
What does an OT assessment contribute?
The functional foundation both roads need: what the person can do, what support that genuinely requires, what the informal network currently absorbs, and which arrangement the evidence supports. For SIL it extends into ratios and overnight evidence; for ILO it feeds the exploration and design of the arrangement.
Sources
- NDIS guidance on Supported Independent Living and Individualised Living Options, ndis.gov.au, accessed August 2026. Support definitions and processes change; confirm the current position with the NDIA or your support coordinator.