Disability Support Worker Duties & Responsibilities: The NDIS Guide
What does a support worker actually do all day? Here is the honest version, written by people who do the job: the duties shift by shift, the responsibilities that sit behind them, and the line between what a support worker can and cannot do.
Registered NDIS Provider · Gold Coast, Logan, Ipswich & Brisbane
What Does A Support Worker Do?
A support worker is a paid, screened worker who helps a person with disability with daily living, personal care, community access and skill building, working to the person's own goals under a plan and service agreement. Under the NDIS, the role is funded through a participant's plan and bound by the NDIS Code of Conduct.
That is the formal version. In practice, an NDIS support worker helps a person with disability live the life they choose, and the job looks different for every participant because every plan, every goal and every routine is different. One shift might be personal care and a medical appointment; the next might be cooking practice, a grocery shop and a swim.
A note before you read on
The duties below are the common ground. What lands in any one worker's week depends on the participant's plan, their goals, and the service agreement.
Core Duties, Area By Area
Personal Care
- Assistance with showering, dressing and grooming
- Mealtime support and meal preparation
- Medication prompting (reminding, not administering, unless trained and authorised)
- Mobility and transfer assistance, including hoists where trained
- Continence support
Community Access
- Support to attend appointments, events and activities
- Transport to and from the community
- Support to join social groups, sport and recreation
- Building confidence in community settings at the participant's pace
Household Tasks
- Cleaning, laundry and tidying the participant cannot do themselves
- Shopping and errands, with or alongside the participant
- Basic yard tasks where they are part of the agreement
Capacity Building
- Cooking, budgeting and daily living skills practice
- Travel training on buses and trains
- Support with study, job seeking and work routines
- Working toward the participant's own plan goals, step by step
Social & Emotional Support
- Consistent, respectful company that builds trust over time
- Encouraging independence rather than doing everything for someone
- Following behaviour support strategies exactly as written, where a plan exists
Records & Reporting
- Progress notes after shifts, written factually and respectfully
- Reporting incidents, hazards and changes in wellbeing
- Communicating with the participant's family, coordinator or therapists as agreed
Responsibilities, And What A Support Worker Can't Do
Every support worker is responsible for
- Following the NDIS Code of Conduct: safe, respectful, honest support
- Holding a valid NDIS Worker Screening Check (and working with children checks where relevant)
- Respecting privacy and keeping participant information confidential
- Working within the participant's plan and the service agreement
- Speaking up: reporting incidents, risks and concerns about a participant's safety or wellbeing
- Turning up. Reliability is the single most repeated piece of feedback participants give about what makes a good worker
Outside the role
- Nursing and clinical tasks, unless specifically trained and authorised for them (see high intensity supports below)
- Administering medication where the agreement only covers prompting
- Restrictive practices of any kind without authorisation and reporting under NDIS Commission rules
- Managing a participant's money beyond what the agreement explicitly covers
- Giving clinical, legal or financial advice
- Making decisions for a participant that are theirs to make
Restrictive practices
Only registered NDIS providers are allowed to implement regulated restrictive practices, and only where there is an authorised behaviour support plan, the authorisation the state or territory requires, and reporting to the NDIS Commission. An unregistered provider cannot use them at all, and no individual worker decides to use one on their own. If it is not in an authorised plan, and the provider is not registered to implement it, it does not happen.
Where complex care fits
Some participants need workers trained for high intensity care tasks like enteral feeding or seizure management. That is a defined, trained-for level of the role, not something a worker picks up on shift. We cover high intensity and complex care support separately.
The Support Worker Job Description, In Plain Terms
Most support worker job descriptions say roughly the same thing, because the role is built the same way wherever you go. If you are reading one before an interview, or writing one, this is what sits in almost every version of it.
Purpose of the role
To support a person with disability to live the life they choose, working to their goals, their plan and their service agreement.
Core tasks
Personal care, community access and transport, household tasks, skill building, social and emotional support, and progress notes after every shift. The six areas above cover the detail.
Reporting and accountability
To a coordinator or team leader inside the provider, with obligations to the participant, the provider and the NDIS Commission. Talking to anyone outside that, including a support coordinator, a family member or a therapist, needs the participant's consent first. Their information is theirs. Incidents, hazards and changes in wellbeing still get reported, not sat on, and reportable incidents go to the provider and the NDIS Commission whether or not consent has been given.
Requirements
NDIS Worker Screening Check, compliance with the NDIS Code of Conduct, and a working with children check where the role involves children. A Certificate III or IV in Individual Support is recommended, and most providers also want first aid, CPR and a driver's licence.
Hours
Rostered per shift, often including mornings, evenings, weekends and sleepovers. Shift lengths and penalty rates generally follow the SCHADS Award.
What is not in the role
Clinical and nursing tasks without specific training and authorisation, restrictive practices without authorisation, and decisions that belong to the participant.
What no job description tells you is the part that decides whether the support actually works. Turn up when you said you would. Read the person, not just the paperwork. Know when to step back so they can do it themselves.
Qualifications, Checks And What Good Providers Add
There is no single mandatory academic qualification for support work in Australia, which surprises people. What is mandatory: the NDIS Worker Screening Check for workers in risk-assessed roles with registered providers, and compliance with the NDIS Code of Conduct for everyone. Many workers also hold a Certificate III or IV in Individual Support, first aid and CPR, and complete the NDIS worker orientation module.
Because the mandatory floor is low, the provider's own standards do a lot of the work. Ours: screening checks before anyone starts, hiring for attitude and reliability, training matched to the participants each worker supports, and you always meet your worker before support starts. The part people notice most is that our leadership stays close to the participants instead of managing from a distance. We stay in touch with the people we support and we know them by name, because standards slip when the people setting them never hear from participants directly, and something raised in a quick conversation gets fixed weeks before it would ever reach us as a complaint. It is also why we publish the condition guides we train our own team with in our resources hub.
If you are choosing a provider and want to know what to check, the questions-to-ask sections on our provider pages for Brisbane, the Gold Coast, Logan and Ipswich cover screening, consistency and staffing in detail.
How The Duties Change, Condition By Condition
Everything above is the common ground. What it looks like in practice depends on who the worker is supporting. Personal care with someone with cerebral palsy is a different skill to keeping a routine steady for someone with anxiety, and both are different again to following a behaviour support plan.
These are the guides we train our own team with. They are free to read, written for workers, and grounded in current research.
- Autism Sensory needs, communication, autonomy, and why masking costs so much.
- ADHD Structure without nagging, emotional regulation, and building the routine together.
- Anxiety Predictability, pacing, and getting through appointments and outings.
- Depression Motivation on the hard days, and starting the day at all.
- PTSD Triggers, safety, and why the same worker every shift matters.
- Schizophrenia Medication routines, early warning signs, and trust that takes time.
- Intellectual disability Skill building, plain language, and supporting decisions instead of making them.
- Cerebral palsy Transfers, mobility and personal care done properly and without rushing.
- Oppositional defiant disorder Following a behaviour support plan exactly as it is written, every time.
More guides are added as we write them. The full set sits in our resources hub.
Support Worker Role FAQ
What is the difference between a support worker and a carer?
A carer is usually an unpaid family member or friend. A support worker is paid, screened and works to a plan and service agreement. The goals differ too: support work is aimed at independence and participation, not just looking after someone.
Can a support worker give medication?
Prompting (reminding someone to take medication they manage themselves) is a normal duty. Administering medication is different: it requires training, authorisation and a service agreement that covers it. High-risk medication tasks sit under high intensity supports with their own competency requirements.
Do support workers do cleaning?
Yes, where it is part of the participant's plan and agreement: cleaning, laundry and household tasks the person cannot do because of their disability. A support worker is not a general cleaning service though, and the line is what the plan funds.
What qualifications does an NDIS support worker need?
Mandatory: an NDIS Worker Screening Check for risk-assessed roles with registered providers, and compliance with the NDIS Code of Conduct. Recommended: Certificate III or IV in Individual Support, first aid and CPR. Good providers add their own screening, training and supervision on top.
What does a support worker do on a typical shift?
It depends entirely on the participant. A morning shift might be personal care, breakfast and a lift to work. A community shift might be an appointment, groceries and a social group. A capacity building shift might be cooking practice or travel training. The constant parts are following the plan, respecting the person's choices, and writing it up afterwards.
How are support workers paid under the NDIS?
Participants' plans fund support at hourly rates that are capped by the NDIS Pricing Arrangements and Price Limits, with the actual rate set in the service agreement. Rates change with the day and time: evenings, weekends and public holidays are priced higher than weekday daytime shifts. Minimum shift lengths generally follow the SCHADS Award, the industry award that covers support workers. You can look up the current capped rate for any support in our free NDIS price guide.
What are the 5 responsibilities of a support worker?
The five core responsibilities are: following the participant's plan and service agreement, providing safe and respectful support under the NDIS Code of Conduct, protecting the participant's privacy and confidentiality, reporting incidents and changes in wellbeing, and turning up reliably so support stays consistent. Everything else in the role builds on those five.
What are 5 legal responsibilities required of all support workers?
Five that apply to every support worker, registered or not: comply with the NDIS Code of Conduct, hold the worker screening required for the role, protect the participant's privacy under the Privacy Act, report incidents and reportable incidents to the provider and the NDIS Commission, and never use a restrictive practice without authorisation and reporting. Duty of care and work health and safety obligations sit underneath all five.
What do you do on your first shift as a support worker?
Read the plan and the risk assessment before you arrive, get there early, and let the participant show you how they do things rather than assuming. Ask where things are kept, what the routine is, and what they want you to do differently to the last worker. Write your progress note before you leave while it is still accurate. Nobody expects you to know the person on day one, and pretending you do is worse than asking.
Can a family member or friend be my NDIS support worker?
Usually not for immediate family: the NDIS only funds a family member as a paid support worker in exceptional circumstances, with NDIA approval. Friends are different: a friend can be employed as your support worker if they are engaged properly, screened, and it fits how your plan is managed. Either way it is worth talking through, because the informal support of family and friends stays important alongside paid support.
Support Worker Jobs at Hearts In Action
If you've read this far and the role sounds like you, we'd like to hear from you. Hearts In Action hires support workers across Brisbane, the Gold Coast, Logan and Ipswich, and we hire for attitude and reliability first: screening checks and training can be arranged, but caring about doing the job properly can't be taught.
Ready to apply? Go straight to the application for your area: apply in Brisbane, apply on the Gold Coast, apply in Logan or apply in Ipswich. Prefer to talk first? Reach us through our contact page or call 07 2812 2406.
South East Queensland
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