Ask a payroll officer which award gives them the most trouble and most will say the Social, Community, Home Care and Disability Services Industry Award — known as the SCHADS Award. The honest answer is not hard to understand: SCHADS covers multiple streams with different rules, its broken shift provisions interact with span-of-hours limits in ways that compound easily, and its sleepover rules changed in June 2026 in ways that affect how providers roster overnight support.
The SCHADS Award covers more than 250,000 workers in social and community services, home care, disability support, crisis accommodation, and family day care across Australia. If your operation delivers NDIS supports, aged care home services, or community programs, this is your award. Getting the rostering rules right matters — and since January 2025, the cost of getting them systematically wrong has risen considerably.
Which streams the award covers
The SCHADS Award is not a single ruleset applied uniformly. It contains four streams, each with its own classification structure and, in some cases, different minimum engagement rules:
- Social and Community Services (SACS) — community sector roles, case management, social work, family services
- Home Care — in-home support for aged care and disability clients, split into disability and non-disability sub-streams
- Crisis Accommodation — workers in refuges, crisis housing, and emergency accommodation
- Family Day Care — educators providing family day care services
A support worker doing in-home disability shifts and a case manager in a community organisation are both covered by SCHADS, but under different classification structures and sometimes different minimum shift rules. Using the wrong stream is itself a compliance error.
Minimum engagement
Minimum engagement under SCHADS is two hours per shift for most employees, including casuals. The exception is the SACS non-disability stream, where the minimum rises to three hours.
This catches providers who roster short community access or in-home support shifts. A 90-minute shift must be paid as two hours. A two-and-a-half-hour shift in the SACS stream must be paid as three hours. The minimum applies regardless of whether the shift is cancelled last minute — if the employee attends and is stood down, they are still entitled to the minimum engagement.
Casual employees receive their 25% loading on top of all hourly rates, including the penalty rates below. The loading and the penalties are calculated on the ordinary base rate, not stacked on each other.
Weekend and evening penalty rates
Penalty rates under SCHADS differ by stream and by the day and time of the shift.
| Day / Time | Penalty rate |
|---|---|
| Saturday | 150% of ordinary rate |
| Sunday | 200% of ordinary rate |
| Public holiday | 250% of ordinary rate |
| After 8pm on a weekday or Saturday | 150% of ordinary rate |
The Sunday rate of 200% makes SCHADS one of the higher-cost weekend awards in the sector. For providers running seven-day community access or home care rosters, Sunday staffing costs need to be factored into service pricing and funding models.
Public holiday work at 250% carries the same minimum engagement rules as ordinary shifts — a short public holiday shift cannot be paid for less than two hours (or three hours in the SACS non-disability stream).
Broken shifts and span of hours
A broken shift is a shift worked in two or more separate periods on the same day, with an unpaid break between them that is not a meal break. In disability support and home care, this is common: a worker might do a morning assist at 7am and an evening assist at 6pm.
Two rules govern broken shifts. First, they attract an allowance on top of the hourly rate: $21.81 per broken shift for one unpaid break, or $28.87 for two unpaid breaks (rates from 1 July 2026, indexed annually). Second, the span of hours — the time from the start of the first period to the end of the last — cannot exceed 12 hours. Hours worked beyond that 12-hour span attract double time.
The span-of-hours limit is where broken-shift rostering breaks down. A worker starting at 7am and finishing an evening shift at 8:30pm sits at 13.5 hours span. The 1.5 hours beyond the 12-hour limit are paid at double time, in addition to the broken shift allowance and any evening loading. This compounds quickly across a week of broken-shift rosters.
Sleepover provisions — changes from 1 June 2026
The Fair Work Commission changed the sleepover rules under SCHADS, taking effect from 1 June 2026. Providers running overnight supports need to understand how the rules now work.
A sleepover is an eight-hour period where an employee is required to remain at the client’s location overnight. Under the rules before June 2026, a sleepover could be treated as a rest break between two separate shifts. From 1 June 2026, this changed: the period of work before a sleepover and the period of work after it are now treated as a single continuous shift.
The practical effects are:
- Minimum rostered hours around a sleepover: An employee rostered to work before or after a sleepover must be rostered for at least four hours of work in that period.
- Extended hours by agreement: Employees and employers can agree to extend ordinary hours up to 12 hours in a single period around a sleepover, with overtime payable for hours beyond 12.
- No more treating the sleepover as a break: The sleepover cannot reset the shift for the purposes of span-of-hours or minimum engagement calculations.
Providers who structured overnight rosters as two separate shifts bracketing a sleepover need to review their approach. Shifts that were compliant before 1 June 2026 may now trigger overtime or minimum engagement obligations under the new rules.
Overtime
Overtime under SCHADS applies when an employee works beyond their ordinary daily or weekly hours.
| Overtime circumstance | Rate |
|---|---|
| First 2 hours of daily overtime | 150% of ordinary rate |
| Beyond 2 hours of daily overtime | 200% of ordinary rate |
| Weekly overtime | 150% for first 2 hours, 200% beyond |
The interaction between broken shifts, sleepover rules, and overtime is the area of greatest complexity. A support worker who does a morning shift, sleepover, and morning shift the following day — now treated as a single continuous arrangement — may accumulate overtime entitlements that were not visible when the roster was built.
Why SCHADS is harder to roster manually than most awards
Three features of SCHADS make manual rostering error-prone.
Multiple interacting provisions. Broken shift allowances, span-of-hours limits, sleepover rules, minimum engagement per stream, and penalty rate matrices all interact. A single overnight broken-shift roster can involve the ordinary rate, an evening loading, a broken shift allowance, sleepover rules, and potentially overtime — all calculated on different bases.
Frequent award changes. The SCHADS Award has been subject to more Fair Work Commission variation over the past three years than most other awards — most recently the sleepover changes in June 2026. Provisions that were compliant last year may not be compliant today.
Client-driven scheduling. Support rosters are built around client needs, not operational convenience. Short shifts, split days, and overnight stays are not exceptions — they are routine. The award provisions hardest to manage manually are exactly the ones that come up most often.
How this looks as you grow
Small providers — fewer than 15 support workers, one or two sites. The Fair Work Ombudsman’s Pay and Conditions Tool covers SCHADS and is a reliable reference for checking specific scenarios. At this scale, manual checking is workable, but it requires someone who understands the stream-level differences and checks the broken-shift span each time a split roster is built.
Growing NDIS or home care providers — 15 to 60 workers across multiple clients. The volume of short and broken shifts makes manual tracking of span of hours, broken shift allowances, and minimum engagement impractical without a system. A rostering tool with SCHADS rules built in catches problematic combinations before the shift is confirmed, not after the payslip is disputed.
Larger organisations — 60 or more workers, multiple service streams. Classification complexity increases at scale: you may have SACS and Home Care employees on the same system with different minimum engagement and penalty rate rules. The June 2026 sleepover changes require a systematic review of overnight roster templates across the organisation — considerably simpler in a system that models the award than in a spreadsheet environment.
The short version
The SCHADS Award covers disability support, home care, aged care, and community services workers across four streams with different rules. Key rostering obligations are a two-hour minimum engagement per shift (three hours for SACS non-disability), broken shift allowances of $21.81 or $28.87, a 12-hour span-of-hours limit, and penalty rates reaching 200% on Sundays and 250% on public holidays. From 1 June 2026, sleepovers are no longer treated as breaks between shifts — the surrounding periods of work are now a single continuous arrangement with a four-hour minimum and overtime implications. The award is frequently varied and manually difficult to track across a client-driven roster.
Frequently asked questions
What is the minimum shift length under the SCHADS Award?
Most SCHADS employees — including casuals — must be engaged for a minimum of two hours per shift. The exception is the Social and Community Services non-disability stream, where the minimum is three hours. The minimum applies even if the client cancels or the worker is stood down after attending.
What is the Sunday penalty rate under the SCHADS Award?
Sunday work under the SCHADS Award is paid at 200% of the ordinary hourly rate. For casual employees, the 25% casual loading and the Sunday penalty rate are both calculated on the ordinary base rate — they are not stacked on each other.
What changed with SCHADS sleepover rules in 2026?
From 1 June 2026, a sleepover can no longer be treated as a rest break between two separate shifts. The work before and after a sleepover is now treated as a single continuous shift. Workers rostered around a sleepover must be rostered for at least four hours of work in each surrounding period, and overtime applies for hours beyond 12.
What is the broken shift allowance under SCHADS?
Employees working a broken shift — two or more periods of work separated by an unpaid non-meal break — receive an allowance in addition to their hourly pay. From 1 July 2026, this is $21.81 for one unpaid break or $28.87 for two unpaid breaks per broken shift.
Does the SCHADS Award cover aged care workers?
The SCHADS Award covers home care workers supporting aged care clients in their homes. Residential aged care workers in facilities are covered by the Aged Care Award, not SCHADS. Workers providing aged care home support under a Commonwealth Home Support Programme or Home Care Package are generally covered by SCHADS.
What is the span-of-hours limit for broken shifts under SCHADS?
A broken shift cannot span more than 12 hours from the start of the first work period to the end of the last. Hours worked beyond that 12-hour span are paid at double time (200% of the ordinary rate), in addition to the broken shift allowance.
This article is general information only and does not constitute legal or industrial relations advice. Award provisions change frequently and vary by stream, classification, and employment type. Consult the Fair Work Ombudsman or a qualified adviser for guidance specific to your operation.
Sources
- Fair Work Ombudsman — Social, Community, Home Care and Disability Services Industry Award (SCHADS Award MA000100)
- Fair Work Ombudsman — Hours of work in the SCHADS Award
- Fair Work Commission — Changes to sleepovers in the SCHADS Award (April 2026 decision, effective 1 June 2026)
- Fair Work Commission — Annual Wage Review 2025–26 Decision
- Fair Work Ombudsman — Pay and Conditions Tool (PACT)
- Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Closing Loopholes No. 2) Act 2024 — Federal Register of Legislation