Behaviour Support & Therapy Services
Our Behaviour Support & Therapy Services
Our Allied Health team provides Therapy and Behaviour Support services that work in collaboration with your support network to ensure everyone has a shared understanding of your needs and how to work toward your goals.
Our team has extensive experience in understanding regulated restrictive practices and work towards their elimination through capacity building of your key supports.
Our clinicians use a Positive Behaviour Support (PBS) approach to act in a person-centered framework when providing support to our clients. PBS understands that challenging behaviour occurs for a reason and communicates important information about a person’s stress, distress, and skill development.
How can Behaviour Support help you?
Behaviour support is a person-centered approach that aims to uplift a person’s quality of life by developing an understanding of the function of a behaviour and implementing strategies to address the needs of an individual.
To understand behaviours of concern, the environmental, social, emotional, or cognitive factors and triggers in which these behaviours occur are identified.
Based on this understanding, a Behaviour Support Plan (BSP) is implemented to provide proactive and reactive strategies to ensure you can lead the life you want to live.
Some positive behaviour support strategies include:
- Relaxation, distraction, or diversion techniques
- Coping mechanisms for when the behaviour of concern arises
- Changing your environment (e.g. sensory stimulation)
- Developing ways to communicate more effectively with others regarding your needs
What is a Behaviour Support Plan?
A Behaviour Support Plan (BSP) uses evidence-based strategies for you and your support network that focus on minimising behaviours of concern, implementing restrictive practices, and improving quality of life, so you can engage with things that are important to you.
Your unique BSP will be developed by our registered NDIS Behaviour Support Specialist in consultation with you and those around you. It will help define what your goals are and the encounters you face in achieving these. It will provide clear and comprehensive actions to help you work towards where you want to be.
To work towards achieving your goals, the process of developing and implementing a BSP involves the following stages:
- Contacting us either by telephone or email to provide us with your details and support needs;
- Getting to know your situation and goals by conducting a functional assessment in your daily environments (e.g. home, work, school, day program) in collaboration with you and your support network;
- Developing a person-centered Behaviour Support Plan that can be understood by those implementing it;
- Putting your plan into action by providing tailored support and training to key people in your network to ensure it is implemented effectively;
- Managing your progress by reviewing your plan annually to ensure that your goals and expectations are matched to your needs.
Get one-on-one support with our Therapy Services
We will provide you a non-judgmental environment where you feel connected, supported, and understood. Working with you one-on-one and at your own pace, we will help you improve your emotional wellbeing and work towards your personal goals.
We will help you understand your feelings and equip you with the resources, tools, and techniques to help you manage different situations. Our therapy services are mobile so we can provide you with support where you feel the most comfortable.
In therapy our psychologist can help you with:
- Support during a difficult time;
- Increasing your understanding of your feelings;
- Improving your communication skills;
- Learning new coping strategies for stressful times or situations.
How do I access Behaviour Support and Therapy Services in my NDIS plan?
Behaviour support services can be accessed through Improved Relationships under Capacity Building Supports NDIS funding.
Our therapy services can be accessed through Improved Daily Living under Capacity Building Supports NDIS funding.
If you do not have Capacity Building funding in your NDIS plan, our Support Coordination team can help guide you through the funding application process.
Frequently Asked Questions
Functions of behaviour refer to the reasons why people behave in a certain way. The reasons for a behaviour can vary widely, whether it is singular or a multitude of reasons. When assessing behaviours of concern, a Behaviour Support Specialist conducts a functional assessment to gain a greater understanding of a person’s behaviour
Functions of behaviour commonly fall into four different categories.
- Attention Seeking: The person behaves to gain social attention or a reaction from other people
- Tangible: The person behaves to get a tangible item or participate in an enjoyable activity
- Escape/Avoidance: The person behaves to get out of or completely avoid doing something they do not want to do
- Sensory Stimulation: The person behaves in a specific way because it feels good to them.
Restrictive practices refer to any practice or intervention that removes or restricts another person’s rights, ability to make a decision, or freedom of movement. Behaviour support aims to reduce and eliminate the use of restrictive practices as the first response to behaviours of concern, as it can present serious human rights infringements.
There are some instances in which regulated restrictive practices are used. Regulated restrictive practices include seclusion, and environmental, physical, mechanical, and chemical restraint. Outlined by the National Disability Insurance Scheme (Restrictive Practices and Behaviour Support) Rules 2018, they include:
- Only in response to a risk of harm to the person with disability or others, as a last resort
- Authorised by any state or territory legislation and/or policy requirements
- In proportion to the risk of harm and used only for the shortest possible time.
Our Service Quality and Clinical teams have a strong understanding and extensive experience in documenting restrictive practices in adherence to the NDIS (Restrictive Practices and Behaviour Support) Rules 2018.
We provide therapy services to adults aged up to 65 years old with disability.
For behaviour support, we provide services to people aged between 7 to 65 years old with a disability.