Silverchain Pay Rates 2026: Support Worker & SCHADS Pay

Silverchain (Silver Chain Group) is a provider of in-home nursing, palliative care, aged and disability support and community health services, with a long history in Western Australia and a substantial footprint in South Australia through Royal District Nursing Service SA. Its workforce is dominated by registered and enrolled nurses and community and home care support workers who deliver care in clients' homes rather than in a facility.

Home care and disability support roles at Silverchain sit on the Social, Community, Home Care and Disability Services Industry Award 2010 (SCHADS), where pay depends on the stream, level and pay point you're classified at — the home care stream is the relevant one for most client-facing support roles. Clinical staff such as registered and enrolled nurses are instead covered by the Nurses Award 2020 or by Silverchain's registered enterprise agreement (listed below where our corpus holds it). If you're engaged under the SCHADS disability home care stream, note that Schedule E's 15% interim pay rise for that stream starts 1 December 2026.

The federal awards relevant to Silverchain roles:

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

Workforce snapshot. In the 2024-25 Workplace Gender Equality Agency reports, Silver Chain Group Limited reported 3,208 employees (part of the Silver Chain Group Limited group, 5,570 employees in total, 12% casual and 89% women). 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 Silverchain agreements in our corpus (1 in total):

• Silver Chain Group Limited Registered and Enrolled Nurses’ Enterprise Agreement 2023 — approved December 2024, nominal expiry 30 June 2026.

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 Silverchain:

• 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.