On 1 June 2026 the Fair Work Commission handed down a landmark decision on the Social, Community, Home Care and Disability Services Industry Award, finding that the award's classification structure and wage rates had been affected by gender-based undervaluation, and ordering the most significant restructure in the award's history. Four weeks later, the 2026 Annual Wage Review increase took effect. If your organisation employs support workers under the SCHADS Award, 2026 is the year the ground moves twice, and every pay rate you are relying on deserves a second look.
This summary covers the current SCHADS Award pay rates, the rules where compliance failures concentrate, and what the June decision means for the next 18 months. Every pay rate and allowance below is current as at the first full pay period on or after 1 July 2026. Treat this as general information: published figures change, so confirm the current award pay guide against your own circumstances before relying on any number.
What the SCHADS Award covers
Understanding the SCHADS Award starts with its coverage. The Social, Community, Home Care and Disability Services Industry Award 2010 (MA000100) applies to employers across four streams. The SCHADS Award includes its own classification structure, allowances and rostering rules for each of them, and the stream determines far more than a label:
- Social and community services covers employees delivering community services, welfare work, social work, youth work and disability services work in community settings. This is the stream with the eight-level classification structure, and it carries the highest pay rates in the award, reflecting the equal remuneration adjustments built into its scale.
- Crisis accommodation covers employees providing crisis accommodation and support to people in housing crisis, classified against the social and community services definitions with their own rate schedule.
- Home care covers personal care, domestic assistance and support delivered to people in private residences, spanning both aged care and disability support. It has its own classification definitions, with separate pay rates for disability care and aged care work, and it is where most disability support worker and home care sector rostering sits.
- Family day care covers employees coordinating and supporting family day care schemes.
The award's boundaries matter as much as its streams. Residential aged care facilities generally fall under another award, the Aged Care Award, rather than SCHADS; the SCHADS Award applies to care delivered in the client's own home through its home care stream. Community health roles can sit under health awards, and an organisation running mixed services can genuinely have employees under more than one award on the same site.
Which stream an employee falls under is not an administrative preference. It determines their pay rate, their minimum engagement, their overtime triggers and, from October 2026, the timing of the changes coming out of the June decision. The same worker can move between rules in a single day: a social and community services employee who spends the afternoon on disability services work picks up a different minimum engagement for that work. If you are unsure whether the SCHADS Award is the right award at all, work through the broader guide to modern award interpretation first, because SCHADS Award interpretation questions are very often coverage questions in disguise.
What changed in 2026
New minimum rates from 1 July 2026
The 2026 Annual Wage Review lifted modern award minimum rates by 4.75 per cent from the first full pay period on or after 1 July 2026. Every SCHADS Award pay rate and allowance in this article is the current published figure from the Fair Work Ombudsman pay guide, effective from that date. Do not derive any 2026 pay rate by adding a percentage to last year's number: the Commission applied additional structural adjustments at the bottom of the award system this year, and pay guides are the only safe source.
The 1 June 2026 gender undervaluation decision
The bigger change arrived a month earlier. In its gender-based undervaluation review, a Full Bench of the Fair Work Commission found that SCHADS wage rates and classifications reflected the historical undervaluation of care work, and decided to:
- Replace the existing multi-schedule classification system with a single integrated classification structure, classifying employees by their experience and substantive role rather than job title, with formal qualifications and lived experience recognised alongside. This commences 1 October 2027 for most of the award.
- Apply an interim uplift of approximately 15 per cent to Schedule E home care rates, proposed to commence 1 October 2026, ahead of the full restructure.
- Revoke the Equal Remuneration Order, whose effect is absorbed into the new wage structure.
For employers, the practical obligation is a reclassification exercise: every employee will need to be mapped into the new structure by reference to their experience, substantive duties and qualifications before the relevant commencement date. In practice that means every classification level and pay point has to be justified on evidence rather than inherited from a job title. Home care providers face that work first, and a material rate increase from October 2026. Budget for both now, because NDIS pricing and aged care funding submissions are made months ahead of cost changes, and a provider that waits for the final determination to start modelling will be pricing this year's contracts on last year's labour costs.
What to do before October 2026
The preparation is unglamorous and entirely doable in the next quarter:
- Confirm current classifications are right. Mapping employees into a new structure from wrong starting classifications carries the old errors forward and prices the uplift off the wrong base.
- Model the Schedule E uplift against your home care service lines and current funding rates, and identify which lines cannot absorb it as priced.
- Collect the inputs the new structure will need. Qualifications, length of experience and current duties, documented per employee, because that is the mapping evidence.
- Check payroll configuration for the rules listed below, since a restructure implemented on top of broken settings automates the errors.
- Watch for the final determination and any transitional provisions before changing rates.
Classification levels and pay points
The SCHADS Award sets pay levels that step through classification levels, with multiple pay points inside each level. Sample current full-time SCHADS Award rates from the 1 July 2026 pay guide:
| Classification (social and community services) | Weekly rate | Hourly rate |
|---|---|---|
| Level 1, pay point 1 | $1,046.90 | $27.55 |
| Level 2, pay point 1 | $1,376.49 | $36.22 |
| Level 3, pay point 1 | $1,538.59 | $40.49 |
| Level 4, pay point 1 | $1,774.74 | $46.70 |
| Level 5, pay point 1 | $2,030.20 | $53.43 |
In the home care stream, disability care pay rates currently run from $27.28 per hour at Level 1 to $35.81 at Level 5, pay point 2, including disability support delivered in a client's own home. Aged care home carers have their own scale, from $32.61 per hour at the introductory level, through $34.42 for a home carer and $36.23 for a qualified carer, to $40.58 for a team leader. Casual employees receive a 25 per cent loading on the minimum pay rate: a casual social and community services Level 2, pay point 1 employee is $45.28 per hour, a higher hourly rate that carries no paid leave with it.
Why the social and community services rates sit higher
The jump between Level 1 and Level 2 in the table above is not a typographical error. It reflects the equal remuneration history of the stream. In June 2012 the Fair Work Commission made an Equal Remuneration Order for social and community services and crisis accommodation classifications, recognising that the work had been underpaid relative to comparable work, and phased additional payments into the rates over nine instalments through to the end of 2020. The current published pay rates for those classifications in the social and community services sector carry that history inside them, which is one reason SCHADS Award rates can never be reconstructed from headline percentage increases. The June 2026 decision continues the same arc: the Commission's finding is that undervaluation persisted despite the ERO, and the new structure will absorb and replace it.
How pay point progression works
An employee becomes eligible to move to a higher pay point after 12 months of continuous employment at their level, subject to demonstrated competency and satisfactory performance. That move to the next pay point after 12 months is the mechanism that delivers higher pay over time without any change of role. Two systems have to work together for that to happen: payroll has to track the anniversary, and someone has to run the competency assessment the award contemplates and document the outcome. In many organisations neither is configured, so nothing moves.
Progression failures are among the common SCHADS underpayments precisely because they are silent. An employee stuck on pay point 1 after three years of service has been underpaid at every pay run since their first anniversary, and the exposure grows with every year the roster stays busy enough that nobody checks.
The rules that catch employers out
The SCHADS Award outlines the shape of work as well as the pay rate, setting hours of work, work periods and work conditions in detail, and these are the provisions where compliance failures concentrate:
- Minimum engagements. Part-time and casual employees must be paid a minimum for each shift, or for each period of work in a broken shift: 3 hours for social and community services employees, except when undertaking disability services work, and 2 hours for all other employees, including home care. A 90 minute home care visit is a 2 hour payment. Rostering software that pays visit length rather than engagement minimums underpays on every short visit.
- Broken shifts. A broken shift allowance of $21.81 applies to a shift with one unpaid break. A shift with two unpaid breaks requires the employee's agreement and attracts $28.87. Work spread beyond a 12 hour span attracts overtime rates for the excess.
- Remote response work. Work performed outside the workplace (phone calls, app-based check-ins, records completed from home) is paid work with minimum payments: 15 minutes for an on-call employee between 6.00am and 10.00pm, 30 minutes for an on-call employee between 10.00pm and 6.00am, and 1 hour where the employee is not on call, including remote attendance at staff meetings or training. Time beyond the minimum rounds to the nearest 15 minutes. An unpaid after-hours phone tree is not a lawful arrangement under this award.
- Meal breaks. A shift over five hours requires an unpaid meal break of 30 to 60 minutes. An employee required to work through it is paid overtime rates until the break is given.
- Sleepovers and 24 hour care. A sleepover attracts an allowance of $62.87 per night, on top of payment for any work the employee actually performs during it, so a disturbed night is a paid night, not an absorbed one. A 24 hour care shift in home care is paid at a fixed per-shift amount by classification, running from $338.24 at Level 1 to $427.20 at Level 5, pay point 1 in the disability care scale. Providers running overnight supports need both mechanisms configured, because a roster that books everything as a sleepover will underpay every genuine 24 hour care arrangement it contains.
- On call and expenses. On call allowances are $25.66 per 24 hours from Monday to Friday and $50.81 for weekends and public holidays. The vehicle allowance is $1.01 per kilometre, the uniform allowance $1.26 per shift up to $6.41 per week, and the laundry allowance $0.33 per shift where employees launder their own uniforms.
None of these are edge cases for disability support workers and community services rostering. They are the ordinary texture of the work for employees under the SCHADS Award, which is why payroll configuration, not payroll processing, is where SCHADS Award compliance is won or lost.
A worked broken shift example
Take a part-time disability care employee in the home care stream at Level 2, pay point 1 ($28.86 per hour). The employee works a familiar community pattern: a morning block from 7.00am to 9.00am, a midday visit from 11.30am to 1.00pm, and an evening block from 5.00pm to 7.00pm. Three periods of work, two unpaid breaks, all within a 12 hour span.
The pay is not "5.5 hours worked". The morning and evening blocks are 2 hours each. The 90 minute midday visit is paid at the 2 hour minimum engagement. That is 6 paid hours, $173.16 at the base pay rate, plus the two-break broken shift allowance of $28.87, and the two-break pattern itself required the employee's agreement. If the evening block ran past 7.00pm, taking the day beyond a 12 hour span from the 7.00am start, the excess would be paid at overtime rates. Price a full roster this way and the difference between configured and unconfigured payroll becomes a five-figure annual number in even a mid-sized provider.
Penalty rates and overtime
Weekend, public holiday and shift work attracts a higher rate of pay, applied on top of the ordinary pay rate. For permanent employees in the social and community services stream, the headline loadings are 150 per cent on Saturday, 200 per cent on Sunday and 250 per cent on public holidays, with additional penalty rates in the form of shift loadings of 12.5 per cent for afternoon shift and 15 per cent for night shift. In current dollars, for the two classifications where much of the sector's direct support workforce sits:
| SACS classification (full-time and part-time) | Base | Saturday | Sunday | Public holiday |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Level 1, pay point 1 | $27.55 | $41.33 | $55.10 | $68.88 |
| Level 2, pay point 1 | $36.22 | $54.33 | $72.44 | $90.55 |
Overtime pay for full-time employees runs at time and a half for the first three hours Monday to Saturday and double time thereafter, with a two hour threshold for part-time employees and disability services work, and double time and a half on public holidays. An employee who does not receive a 10 hour break after overtime is paid at overtime rates until they get one.
Casual rates carry their own published penalty figures rather than a simple loading stacked on top: a casual SACS Level 1, pay point 1 employee is $34.44 base, $48.21 on Saturday, $61.99 on Sunday and $75.76 on a public holiday. This interaction between casual loading and penalties is precisely the arithmetic that generic payroll templates get wrong. These rates vary depending on employment type, and public holiday pay rates are where the gap is widest, so check the published pay guide for the exact classification, stream and day rather than multiplying loadings yourself.
SCHADS Award compliance: what to check first
Almost every SCHADS Award payroll I have audited has had at least one of three errors: pay point progression never configured, minimum engagements rounded down on short home care visits, or broken shift allowances simply not set up. For one provider with over 100 employees, those three together came to over $50,000 owed in backpay to their support workers.
The SCHADS Award is widely described as the most operationally complex award in the system, and the sector it covers runs on thin margins, NDIS pricing and government funding cycles. That combination makes wage errors both easy to make and hard to absorb. With a 15 per cent home care uplift proposed for October 2026 and a full reclassification exercise due by October 2027, the cost of discovering configuration errors late is about to rise.
Before the October changes land: if your organisation has not independently verified its classification levels, pay rates, minimum engagement settings and allowance triggers against the current award, an independent audit of SCHADS Award classifications and pay points gives you a documented baseline to carry into the restructure, and evidence that you set out to ensure fair pay rather than discover a shortfall later. Call Daniel on 1300 23 44 23.
Care work is also where workforce pressure and compliance obligations meet: the same organisations navigating SCHADS complexity carry psychosocial safety obligations for a workforce doing emotionally demanding work. The two conversations belong together.
