If you employ home care disability support workers under the SCHADS Award, there's a Schedule E pay increase landing from the first full pay period on or after 1 October 2026, a Thursday. It's not a small adjustment. For most classifications, it's an interim increase of around 15%, and it comes from a Fair Work Commission decision that found this work has been undervalued for a long time, on gender grounds.
Here's the thing about award increases like this one: everyone finds out the percentage, nobody models the actual cost until the pay run's already landed. By then it's too late to plan around it, you're just reacting. This one's worth doing properly, and there's still time to do it.
On 1 June 2026, the Fair Work Commission handed down its decision in the gender-based undervaluation review of the SCHADS Award. The Commission's finding was straightforward in principle, even if the fix is complicated: home care disability work, done overwhelmingly by women, has been paid less than comparable work of equal value for years. Aged care workers received a similar interim uplift back in 2023. This decision extends the same logic to home care disability support under Schedule E.
The interim increase is a first step, not the final word. A full Final Classification Structure is set to replace Schedules B, C, E and F from 1 October 2027, a much bigger structural change still a year further out. What lands this October is the interim fix, and it's real money from day one.
For most Schedule E classifications, the interim increase is approximately 15%, effective from the first full pay period on or after 1 October 2026. A couple of classifications sit slightly lower, reported in workplace law commentary at 14.96% and 13.31% for Levels E.4.2 and E.5.2 respectively, because their rates under the eventual new structure land closer to where they already sit.
We'd flag that the exact classification-level split hasn't been something we've been able to verify word for word against the Commission's own decision text, so treat the headline 15% as the reliable number and check your own classifications directly against the award before locking in your model.
The Commission's decision is also still subject to it finalising its position after submissions. Budget for it now. Don't treat the exact figures as locked in stone until the final determination lands.
Here's a straightforward way to approach it before 1 October arrives:
Start with your roster, not the percentage. Pull every employee currently classified under Schedule E. The increase doesn't apply evenly across your whole home care team, only to the classifications it covers, so a blanket "15% on everyone" estimate will be wrong in both directions.
Apply the right rate to the right classification. Most Schedule E classifications get the roughly 15% figure. If you have staff on Levels E.4.2 or E.5.2, don't assume the same number applies, check the award directly for those.
Don't stop at base wages. A wage increase flows through further than the headline rate suggests: superannuation guarantee contributions rise with it, leave loading rises with it, and any penalty rates or allowances calculated as a percentage of the base rate rise with it too. Model all four, not just the headline wage line.
Project it against actual pay cycles, not a single month. Run the new rates against a normal roster cycle for your service, including weekends, sleepovers, and broken shifts if they apply, so the cash flow impact you're looking at reflects a real fortnight or month, not an average.
Do this while you've still got runway. The point of modelling now instead of in late September is that if the number's bigger than expected, you've still got time to plan around it, adjust budgets, or have the funding conversation early. Waiting until the pay period starts turns a planning exercise into a scramble.
Here's the part that's easy to miss: your wage bill and your NDIS funding aren't guaranteed to move together. The NDIA's 2026-27 Annual Pricing Review adjusted Disability Support Worker price limits for the 4.75% Annual Wage Review increase that took effect from 1 July. As things currently stand, there's no confirmed update to NDIS pricing that specifically absorbs the Schedule E interim increase.
That's not a reason to panic, but it is a reason not to assume your funding will simply catch up on its own. If you're modelling cash flow, model it against your current NDIS pricing, not against a hoped-for adjustment that hasn't been confirmed.
We built Pay Cat because SCHADS payroll is genuinely complicated, and a change like this is exactly where that complexity shows up. Getting the classification, the base rate, and the flow-on entitlements right, for every employee, every pay run, isn't a spreadsheet problem you want to be solving manually in the last week of September.
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