What Is Positive Behaviour Support?
Positive behaviour support (PBS) is an evidence-based approach that helps people with disability understand why certain behaviours occur and build lasting skills to address them. At Your Best Life Behaviour Support, we work alongside participants, families, and support workers from Gympie to Brisbane to do exactly that — understand the person, understand the behaviour, and create practical strategies that lead to real change.
If you are a participant, carer, support coordinator, or support worker trying to understand how PBS works, what it costs, and what you can actually expect from the process, our team covers everything you need to know.
Quick Answer: Positive Behaviour Support PBS In Plain English
Positive behaviour support is a structured, person-centred framework used under the NDIS to help people with permanent and significant disability reduce behaviours of concern. A registered behaviour support practitioner works with the participant and their support network to identify why the behaviour happens, then develops a behaviour support plan with personalised strategies to address it.
The goal is not simply to manage or suppress behaviour but to improve quality of life, strengthen relationships, build skills, and reduce or eliminate restrictive practices over time.
What Is Positive Behaviour Support?
Positive behaviour support is both a clinical discipline and a values framework. It draws on applied behaviour analysis, psychology, and person-centred care to understand the function of behaviour. That is, what a behaviour communicates or achieves for the individual. Once we understand the function, we can introduce support strategies that meet that need in a safer, more effective way.
PBS sits within the NDIS as a specialist support. The NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission requires that any support involving restrictive practices be delivered by a registered, qualified behaviour support practitioner. Practitioners must hold the appropriate capability framework level and are accountable to the Commission for the plans they develop and the outcomes they achieve.
What separates PBS from older approaches to behaviour management is its orientation. Traditional methods focused on consequences, on stopping behaviour after it occurred. On the other hand, positive behaviour support focuses on understanding, on addressing the conditions that make the behaviour likely in the first place.
That shift in focus changes everything, from reactive to proactive, from control to capacity-building, from compliance to genuine quality of life.
Why Positive Behaviour Support Matters
Challenging behaviour affects every part of a person’s life. It affects their safety, their relationships, their ability to participate in the community, and their sense of who they are. It also affects the people around them including carers who feel depleted, support workers who are unsure how to respond, families who are trying to hold everything together without a clear plan.
Without the right support in place, challenging behaviour tends to escalate. Well-meaning people often turn to restrictive practices — physical redirection, environmental limits, sedating medication — because they do not have better tools.
These approaches may reduce immediate risk, but they do not address the underlying cause. The behaviour continues. The quality of life for the participant does not improve.
Positive behaviour support offers a structured way through this. By identifying why a behaviour happens, PBS gives participants and everyone around them a shared understanding and a clear plan. Strategies are proactive and built around the person.
Over time and through consistent implementation, training, and review, this leads to reduced challenging behaviours, improved relationships, greater independence, and a genuinely better quality of life.
Who Can Access Positive Behaviour Support Under The NDIS
Positive behaviour support is available to NDIS participants who have a permanent and significant disability and whose behaviour presents a risk of harm to themselves or others, or significantly limits their participation in everyday life. Common conditions include:
- Autism spectrum disorder
- Intellectual disability
- Acquired brain injury
- Developmental delay
- Psychosocial disability
- Neurological conditions affecting behaviour and communication
PBS is not limited to any age group. We work with children, young people, and adults. Funding for behaviour support is typically held under the Capacity Building — Improved Relationships support category in an NDIS plan. If you are unsure whether your plan includes behaviour support funding, your support coordinator or plan manager can help you confirm this.
You do not need to wait until a situation becomes critical to seek support. Early engagement almost always produces better outcomes than crisis intervention. If behaviour is affecting quality of life or safety, whether for the participant or for those around them, it is worth getting in touch with a support practitioner.
NDIS Positive Behaviour Support: Funding And Registration
Under the NDIS, positive behaviour support is classified as a specialist support and must be delivered by a registered provider. This matters because the NDIS Commission has oversight of how PBS is delivered, how plans are developed, and how restrictive practices are managed and reported.
At YBL Behaviour Support, we are a registered NDIS provider. That means we meet the Commission’s requirements for delivering specialist behaviour support, and we are accountable for the quality and safety of every plan we develop. Our practitioners hold the required qualifications and work within the NDIS practice standards that govern behaviour support.
Behaviour support funding is separate from other therapy funding in your NDIS plan. It is not drawn from the same pool as occupational therapy or speech pathology. If a participant requires behaviour support and does not currently have funding for it, this can be raised at a plan review with supporting evidence from a practitioner.
Understanding Behaviours Of Concern And Challenging Behaviour
Behaviours of concern — sometimes called challenging behaviour — are actions that cause harm to the participant, to others, or to property, and that limit a person’s ability to participate in daily life. They are almost always a form of communication. A person may engage in challenging behaviour because they are in pain, overwhelmed, unable to communicate a need, reacting to a sensory environment that does not suit them, or responding to a situation they cannot verbalise.
Common behaviours of concern include self-injurious behaviour, physical aggression, property damage, elopement, persistent refusal, and verbal aggression. None of these exist in isolation. Each has a context, a history, and a function. That function is what practitioners are trained to identify.
It is worth noting that the presence of restrictive practices in a participant’s current support does not mean those practices are appropriate or permanent. Under the NDIS framework, restrictive practices must be documented, reported to the Commission, and actively reduced through the behaviour support plan. Behaviour support is the mechanism through which this happens.
How The Positive Behaviour Support Process Works
Positive behaviour support follows a clear, staged process. Understanding each step helps participants, carers, and support coordinators know what to expect and how to engage effectively at each point.
Functional Behaviour Assessment
The process begins with a functional behaviour assessment. Our practitioners interview the participant and the people who know them best: family members, carers, support workers, and other allied health professionals.
We observe the participant across different environments and review relevant records. The purpose is to identify the antecedents (what happens before the behaviour), the behaviour itself, and the consequences (what follows). From this, we develop a hypothesis about the function the behaviour serves for the individual.
A thorough functional behaviour assessment takes time. It is not a checklist. It is a collaborative process that requires honesty, careful observation, and genuine engagement from everyone involved in the participant’s life.
Interim Behaviour Support Plan
When restrictive practices are already in use, an interim behaviour support plan is developed quickly to provide immediate guidance while the full assessment is completed. Under the NDIS framework, this interim plan must be lodged with the NDIS Safeguards Commission within 30 days. It identifies the behaviours of concern, acknowledges any restrictive practices in use, and provides initial proactive and reactive support strategies to reduce risk.
Comprehensive Behaviour Support Plan
Once the functional behaviour assessment is complete, our team develops a comprehensive behaviour support plan. This is a detailed, evidence-based document that includes a clear description of the behaviour and its function, the contributing environmental and contextual factors, proactive strategies to reduce the likelihood of the behaviour occurring, reactive strategies to manage the behaviour safely when it does occur, and a plan for reducing or eliminating any restrictive practices.
The plan is written in plain language and is designed to be used by support workers and carers in daily practice, not filed away.
Implementation and Support Worker Training
A behaviour support plan is only as effective as its implementation. Our practitioners work directly with support workers, carers, and families to ensure they understand the plan, feel confident applying its strategies, and know how to record and report what they observe.
Consistent implementation across all environments whether at home, in school, or within the community is what creates lasting change. We provide the training and ongoing guidance to make that consistency possible.
Review and Continuous Improvement
Behaviour support is a living process. We monitor progress against the plan, collect data on outcomes, and review strategies regularly. When something is not working, we adjust. When a participant builds new skills or their circumstances change, we update the plan to reflect that. Continuous improvement is not an optional extra in PBS. Rather, it is built into the framework.
What Outcomes Can You Expect From Positive Behaviour Support?
The outcomes of positive behaviour support look different for each participant, depending on the nature and severity of their behaviour, the consistency of implementation, and the strength of their support network. That said, the goals we work toward are consistent across every plan we develop:
- A reduction in the frequency, intensity, or duration of challenging behaviour
- Improved communication and greater ability to express needs
- Stronger, more positive interactions between the participant and the people around them
- A reduction in the use of restrictive practices, with a clear pathway to eliminate them where possible
- Greater independence and participation in daily activities
- Improved quality of life for both the participant and their support network
These outcomes take time. Positive behaviour support is not a short-term intervention. Families and carers who engage fully with the process that includes attending training, applying strategies consistently, and communicating openly with our practitioners tend to see the most meaningful change.
When To Seek Professional Behaviour Support
You do not need to be in crisis to contact a behaviour support practitioner. The following situations are all good reasons to get in touch:
- Behaviour is causing harm or risk of harm to the participant or to others
- Restrictive practices are in use and there is no approved behaviour support plan lodged with the NDIS Commission
- An existing plan is not producing progress and strategies need to be reviewed
- A participant is transitioning to a new environment — a new home, school, or day program — and behaviour has changed
- Support workers or carers feel unsure how to respond to behaviour and need clear guidance
- A participant struggles to communicate their needs and this is contributing to frustration or distress
If you are a support coordinator or allied health professional referring on behalf of a participant, our team is experienced in working collaboratively within multidisciplinary networks.
We welcome referrals and are happy to discuss suitability before a formal referral is submitted.
How Your Best Life Behaviour Support Can Help
We are a registered NDIS provider offering positive behaviour support services from Gympie to Brisbane, with offices in Maroochydore on the Sunshine Coast and Morayfield in the Moreton Bay region. Our team of qualified behaviour support practitioners brings both clinical expertise and a genuine commitment to person-centred care.
Our services include functional behaviour assessments, interim and comprehensive behaviour support plans, implementation support, and training for support workers and carers. We work closely with participants and their support networks to ensure that every plan is practical, grounded in evidence, and aligned with the participant’s individual goals.
We hold ourselves to the NDIS practice standards and are transparent about our obligations under the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission. Our focus is on building skills, strengthening support networks, and reducing the use of restrictive practices, and not simply managing behaviour from one day to the next.
Ready To Start The Positive Behaviour Support Process?
If you are based in Gympie, Brisbane, or anywhere from Maroochydore to Morayfield and you are looking for a registered NDIS behaviour support provider, we would be glad to hear from you.
If you are ready to refer, you can submit a referral directly through our online referral form.
Not sure whether PBS is the right fit? That is exactly the kind of question we are here to help you answer. Get in touch and we will walk you through it.
9 Maud Street, Maroochydore, QLD 4558
260 Morayfield Road, Morayfield, QLD 4506
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between an interim and a comprehensive behaviour support plan?
An interim behaviour support plan is developed quickly — within 30 days — when restrictive practices are already in use. It provides immediate guidance while a full assessment is conducted and must be lodged with the NDIS Safeguards Commission.
A comprehensive behaviour support plan is developed after a thorough functional behaviour assessment and provides a detailed, evidence-based framework covering proactive strategies, reactive strategies, and a plan to reduce or eliminate restrictive practices.
How is positive behaviour support funded under the NDIS?
Behaviour support funding is typically held under the Capacity Building — Improved Relationships support category in an NDIS plan. It is a specialist support and must be delivered by a registered NDIS provider. If you do not currently have behaviour support funding, a practitioner can provide evidence to support a funding request at your next plan review.
What does a behaviour support practitioner actually do?
A behaviour support practitioner conducts functional behaviour assessments, develops interim and comprehensive behaviour support plans, trains support workers and carers to implement strategies, monitors progress, and reviews and updates plans over time. They work closely with the participant, their family, and their broader support network to ensure strategies are practical and consistently applied across all environments.
Do you work with children as well as adults?
Yes. We work with NDIS participants of all ages — children, young people, and adults. Our approach is adapted to suit the age, communication style, and goals of each individual. For younger participants, we also work closely with families and educators to ensure strategies are consistent across home and school environments.
What is a functional behaviour assessment?
A functional behaviour assessment is a structured clinical process used to identify why a behaviour happens. It involves interviews with the participant and their support network, direct observation across different settings, and a review of relevant records. The findings are used to build a hypothesis about the function of the behaviour, which then informs the strategies in the behaviour support plan.
Can positive behaviour support help reduce restrictive practices?
Yes, reducing and ultimately eliminating restrictive practices is one of the primary goals of PBS. Under the NDIS framework, restrictive practices must be documented, reported to the Commission, and actively reduced through the behaviour support plan. Our practitioners work to understand the function behind the behaviour that prompted the restrictive practice in the first place, and to replace it with safer, more effective support strategies.
How long does it take to see results from positive behaviour support?
This depends on the complexity of the behaviour, the consistency of implementation across the support network, and the participant’s individual circumstances. Some families see meaningful improvements within a few months. Others engage with behaviour support over a longer period, particularly when restrictive practices need to be gradually reduced or when multiple environments are involved. Progress is reviewed regularly and strategies are adjusted as needed.
How do I make a referral for positive behaviour support?
You can submit a referral directly through the online referral form on our website, or contact us at enquiries@ybl.org.au. We accept referrals from participants and families, support coordinators, allied health professionals, and other service providers. If you are unsure whether a referral is appropriate, feel free to contact us first to discuss the situation.