Responsibility: Australian Government
Response: Accept in principle
Status: Further work required
What has been achieved to date
Numbers of NDIS Practitioners continue to grow steadily across all states and territories.
While further work is required to implement this recommendation, the NDIS Commission has implemented aspects, including through its online tool the ‘Find an NDIS Behaviour Support Practitioner’ which helps find behaviour support practitioners.
Further to this, an external review of the Positive Behaviour Support Capability Framework and behaviour support practitioner suitability assessment process has commenced. This will deliver a five-year road map to uplift the skills and capabilities of existing practitioners and raise the threshold for incoming NDIS practitioners.
What the Disability Royal Commission said in the final report
The NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission should, by December 2024, improve access to behaviour support practitioners by:
a) providing incentives for practitioners and National Disability Insurance Scheme providers to provide behaviour support services, including in regional and remote areas in which ‘thin markets’ operate
b) forming a partnership with First Nations leaders from the disability and employment services sectors to develop a recruitment strategy targeting First Nations people and others with experience in working with First Nations communities to address behaviour support shortages in regional and remote areas
c) exploring with behaviour support practitioners, service providers and people with disability, the merits of an ‘on-the-job’ professional development and accreditation model for behaviour support practitioners
d) creating a publicly accessible list of all individual behaviour support practitioners.
Australian Government Response July 2024
The Australian Government is committed to improving access to behaviour support practitioners. The NDIS Commission has an existing Provider Finder through which individual Behaviour Support Practitioners can be identified. The search tool will help identify whether a behaviour support practitioner is considered suitable. Only behaviour support practitioners who have consented to publish their details are included in the search results. A number of provisionally suitable behaviour support practitioners awaiting an outcome on their application will not appear until their application is approved and they have been considered suitable.
The NDIS Commission will explore potential approaches and feasibility of the options outlined in this recommendation to improve access to behaviour support practitioners. Ongoing work beyond the 2024 timeframe will be required, particularly in respect of access to behaviour support practitioners in rural and remote locations.
More recommendations
View progress on other recommendations made by the Royal Commission.