How to get a behaviour support plan through the NDIS

If you’re supporting someone whose behaviour is putting them, or the people around them, at risk — or just making everyday life harder than it needs to be — a behaviour support plan can be a genuinely helpful part of their NDIS plan. Getting from “I think we need this” to an actual plan in place involves a few steps, but none of them are complicated once you know what to expect.

Here’s how the process generally works, from checking your funding through to a plan your whole team can use.

1. Check it’s funded in your plan

Behaviour support is usually funded through the Capacity Building budget, most often under Improved Relationships (sometimes you’ll see it sitting under Improved Daily Living instead, depending on how a plan has been written).

Start by checking your NDIS plan, or ask your support coordinator or Local Area Coordinator to confirm the funding is there and how much of it you have. If it isn’t in your plan yet, that’s not the end of the road — you can ask for it at your next plan review or planning meeting. Requests like this tend to go more smoothly with supporting evidence: reports or letters from a GP, allied health team, school, or other supports that describe the behaviour of concern and why specialist behaviour support is needed. A support coordinator can help pull this together if you’re not sure where to start.

2. Choose a behaviour support practitioner

Once the funding is there, the next step is choosing who will do the work. Behaviour support practitioners who develop NDIS behaviour support plans are assessed as suitable by the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission — this is what allows them to work on plans that include, or work towards reducing, restrictive practices.

Not every suitable practitioner is a registered NDIS provider in their own right. Some are assessed as suitable by the Commission and deliver their behaviour support in partnership with a registered specialist behaviour support provider instead. I work this way myself: I’m a behaviour support practitioner deemed suitable by the Commission, delivering support in partnership with Tranquil Trails Counselling and Therapy, a registered specialist behaviour support provider — so your service agreement would be with Tranquil Trails.

Either way, it’s reasonable to ask a practitioner about their experience, how they work, and how they’ll keep you and your team involved along the way.

3. Start with a service agreement

Once you’ve found a practitioner who feels like a good fit, you’ll usually have an initial conversation about what’s going on and what support could look like. If you decide to go ahead, this is formalised in a service agreement with the registered NDIS provider the practitioner works through. The agreement sets out what will be delivered, how often, and how the funding in your plan will be used — take your time reading it, and ask questions about anything that isn’t clear.

4. The assessment — understanding what’s happening and why

With the service agreement in place, the practitioner will usually start with an assessment, most often a Functional Behaviour Assessment. This involves talking with you, the participant where possible, and the people who spend time with them — family, support workers, teachers, whoever’s relevant — as well as observing the behaviour in the situations where it tends to happen.

The point of the assessment isn’t to label or judge the behaviour. It’s to understand its function: what tends to happen before and after, what need it might be meeting, and what in the environment might be contributing. This understanding is what the rest of the plan is built on.

5. Your behaviour support plan

From the assessment, the practitioner develops a behaviour support plan. If there’s a level of risk that means the team can’t wait for the full picture to emerge, an interim behaviour support plan is usually put in place first — enough to guide everyone safely in the short term, developed within the required timeframes.

The interim plan is followed by a comprehensive behaviour support plan, which goes into more depth: proactive strategies, skill-building, environmental changes, and reactive strategies the family and support team can use consistently. Where restrictive practices are part of the picture, the plan sets out how they’ll be used only as a last resort, monitored, and worked towards reducing over time — the aim is always to reduce reliance on them, not lock them in.

6. Putting the plan into practice

A plan sitting in a drawer doesn’t help anyone. The practitioner works with the family and support team to put the plan into practice, which often includes coaching and training so everyone responds consistently, in the moments that matter.

Behaviour support plans are also living documents. As things change — new strategies bedding in, new situations coming up, the participant’s own growth — the plan is reviewed and adjusted so it keeps working for them over time.

Where to start

Getting a behaviour support plan in place involves a few moving parts, but you don’t have to work through them alone. Take a look at how it works for more on what the day-to-day looks like, or browse my services to see where you might start. If you’d like to talk through funding, timing, or whether this could help someone you support, get in touch — I’m happy to answer questions before anything is formal.