There’s a phrase that appears in almost every behaviour support plan containing a restrictive practice: “to be used as a last resort, with the aim of reduction and elimination over time.”
Now here’s the question that matters. In how many of those plans does anything concrete happen after that sentence? A date? A step-down sequence? A measure that triggers the next reduction? Or does the sentence just sit there, year after year, while the practice quietly becomes furniture?
A restrictive practice without a working fade-out strategy is unfortunately being used as a permanent fixture with polite wording.
This article is about the difference.
What the law actually says.
Quick grounding first, because the obligations here are specific. Under the Behaviour Support Rules, a regulated restrictive practice, seclusion, chemical restraint, mechanical restraint, physical restraint or environmental restraint, may only be used when it meets strict conditions. It must be clearly identified in a behaviour support plan. Used only as a last resort. The least restrictive response available. It must reduce the risk of harm, be proportionate to that risk, and be used for the shortest possible time.
Disclaimer: There are different rules for restrictive practices in each state and territory around Australia – make sure to read up on the rules in your own area.
And then the condition this article lives in: all reasonable steps to reduce and eliminate the use of the practice must be taken.
Notice the verbs. Not “consider reducing”. Not “aspire to eliminate”. Take all reasonable steps. Where a practice is included in a plan, it requires authorisation under state or territory arrangements, and plans should be in place to reduce and eliminate the practice over time. The fade-out plan is part of the legal basis on which the practice is permitted at all.
The practice guide backs this with evidence worth quoting: studies have shown high quality behaviour support plans are associated with a reduction in the use of restrictive practices. Quality and fade-out travel together.
What a fade-out strategy actually contains.
A real fade-out strategy is a plan within the plan, and it has recognisable parts.
A destination and a route. Not “reduce over time” but the actual dimension being faded and the steps. Practices can fade along different dimensions: how often the practice can be used, how long it lasts each time, how intense or complete it is, and in how many settings or situations it applies. A door locked all day fades toward set hours where it stays open. A routine PRN medication fades toward review-gated use, in collaboration with prescribers. Each step is small, defined and dated.
Conditions that trigger the next step. What has to be true for the next reduction? Usually: the replacement behaviour is established, incident data has held below an agreed level for an agreed period, and the preventative strategies are running consistently. Data decides, not nerves. This is why the baseline data the practice guide requires includes current restrictive practice use: you cannot show reduction without a starting measure.
The strategies doing the real work. Here’s the core logic the sector keeps forgetting: a restrictive practice is not faded by bravery, it’s faded by making itself unnecessary. The practice exists in response to a behaviour. The behaviour serves a function. Fade-out succeeds when the function-based work succeeds: setting events addressed, environments made capable, replacement behaviours taught and honoured, quality of life genuinely improving. The fade-out schedule is just the measuring stick laid against that work. If the underlying plan is weak, no schedule will save it, and if the underlying plan is strong, the practice starts looking redundant on its own.
Monitoring and an honest reversal clause. Who reviews the data, how often, and what happens if a step increases risk. Sometimes a step gets paused or walked back. That’s not failure, that’s the system working. What’s not acceptable is the quiet indefinite pause that nobody reviews again.
If you can’t say what would trigger the next reduction step, there is no fade-out strategy. There’s a hope.
Why fade-out fails: naming the real obstacle.
The technical parts of fade-out are not complicated. The reason practices persist is mostly not technical. It’s fear, and it deserves to be named respectfully, because it’s usually sincere.
The practice “works”. The house is calmer since the door was locked. The incidents dropped after the medication started. Every person in the room at review time remembers the time before, and nobody wants to be the one who agreed to the step that preceded an injury. So the safest personal decision for every individual, staff member, manager, even family, is to keep things as they are. Multiply that by every review, and a “short-term” practice turns five years old.
Three things break the pattern.
Small steps shrink the fear. Nobody has to agree to leave the door open forever. They have to agree to open-door hours on weekday mornings, with support present, for six weeks, with data reviewed fortnightly and a clear reversal clause. Fade-out design is largely the art of making each step small enough that saying yes is reasonable.
Data replaces memory. The house remembers the worst incident. The data shows the current reality: months of the replacement behaviour working, incidents rare and less intense. Decisions made from memory preserve practices. Decisions made from data retire them.
Someone owns the question. Practices persist when no one is responsible for challenging them. The practice guide makes assessment that someone: every behaviour support assessment must examine existing practices, and the review cycle keeps asking. Which brings us to the guide’s checklist.
The questions the practice guide expects assessments to ask.
The new practice guide arms assessments with direct questions about every existing practice, and they double as a family and coordinator toolkit. A sample, close to the guide’s own wording:
What was tried before resorting to this practice, and what were the outcomes? What less restrictive options have been considered or trialled? Does the practice actually reduce the risk of harm, or does it introduce new risks that outweigh the behaviour’s? What are the circumstances in which it should be stopped? What is the plan to fade it out, and does that plan safeguard the person’s rights, dignity and wellbeing? How will reduction be monitored during implementation? Can routine use become PRN use?
And underneath all of them, the guide’s sharpest observation, from its section on prioritising behaviours: the continued use of a restrictive practice signals that current supports are not effectively meeting the person’s needs. A practice still in place at year three is not evidence the practice is needed. It’s evidence the support around it hasn’t done its job yet.
The guide also requires something humane that’s easy to overlook: the person themselves must be told about any practice in a way they can understand, and their views on it, and on alternatives, must be sought and documented. People subject to restrictive practices are routinely the last people consulted about them. The guide says they come first.
Final words
Every restrictive practice in every plan in Australia carries the same legal promise: last resort, shortest possible time, all reasonable steps toward elimination. Fade-out strategies are what that promise looks like when it’s kept. A destination, small dated steps, data-based triggers, function-based work underneath, and someone who owns the question.
If you support someone whose plan contains a practice, here are the two questions worth asking at the next review: “What’s the next reduction step, and what data would trigger it?” If the answers exist, the promise is being kept. If the room goes quiet, you’ve just done that person a real service by asking.
And if the answers don’t exist, that’s precisely the kind of situation we help with.
From the Insight PBS team to yours 🙂
Resources
Originally posted on the Insight PBS website here
Read the practice guide: NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission, Behaviour Support Assessment, including Functional Behaviour Assessment: Practice Guide (2026)
Refer to Insight Positive Behaviour Support
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