Life Without Barriers Pay Rates 2026: Support Worker & SCHADS Pay

Life Without Barriers is a national not-for-profit delivering disability support, out-of-home care for children and young people, mental health, homelessness and refugee services, with a workforce of several thousand support workers, youth workers and case managers across every state and territory.

Frontline roles sit on the Social, Community, Home Care and Disability Services Industry Award 2010 (SCHADS) — disability support workers on the home care and disability streams, case managers and youth workers on the social and community services stream — with Life Without Barriers' own enterprise agreements above it (below).

The federal awards relevant to Life Without Barriers roles:

• Social, Community, Home Care and Disability Services Industry Award 2010 (MA000100)

Workforce snapshot. In its 2024-25 report to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency, Life Without Barriers declared 7,810 employees across 3 reporting entities — 27.7% casual and 63.7% women, with 345 in management roles. Source: WGEA 2025 Public Data File, data.gov.au (CC-BY 3.0 AU).

The SCHADS award pays by stream (social and community services, home care, disability, crisis accommodation), then classification level, then pay point — so there is no single "disability support worker rate". Our SCHADS pay rates page carries the full current pay-point matrix, verified against the Fair Work Commission's pay database, plus the sleepover, broken-shift and minimum-engagement rules that decide most disability pay disputes.

Enterprise agreements set rates above the award, with their own classification structures and allowances. Current Life Without Barriers agreements in our corpus (4 in total):

• Life Without Barriers Disability Services Enterprise Agreement Victoria 2026 — approved August 2026, nominal expiry 24 August 2028.
• Life Without Barriers Education Enterprise Agreement 2026 — approved January 2026, nominal expiry 26 January 2028.
• Life Without Barriers Transferred NSW Government Nurses Enterprise Agreement 2023 — approved May 2023, nominal expiry 26 May 2026.
• Life Without Barriers Disability Services Enterprise Agreement Victoria 2022-2025 — approved April 2023, nominal expiry 31 December 2025.

We don't reproduce agreement dollar figures here — the agreement covering your site, state and stream is the document to read. Find your agreement, then your classification, then your pay point, and compare it with your payslip. The award tables on this page are the floor every one of these agreements must beat.

General award-compliance issues that come up across the disability support sector. This is a checklist for your own payslip, not a finding about Life Without Barriers:

• Wrong SCHADS level or pay point for qualifications and years of service.
• Sleepover and active-night shifts paid as if they were the same thing.
• Broken shifts without the allowance, and travel between clients unpaid.
• Minimum engagements ignored on short support shifts.

Match your payslip to your classification in the agreement (or the award tables above), and price any gap with our back-pay calculator. Raise it in writing with payroll or your manager first — most underpayments are fixed at that step. Unresolved, the Fair Work Ombudsman (13 13 94) recovers underpayments at no cost, up to six years back, and your union can run the claim for you. Not sure which instrument covers you? Ask our AI advisor with your role and location.