Lessons from the BSP Quality Snapshot’s “underdeveloped” mean score.
A deeper understanding of how behaviour support plans are actually scored, why the national average has stalled, and what quality looks like in a document you can hold.
At the end of this article, you will know:
- What the Behaviour Support Plan Quality Snapshot found, and what “underdeveloped” actually means
- Why the Commission traced stalled plan quality back to assessment
- The markers of a quality plan, drawn from the evaluation research and the practice guide
- Questions anyone can ask to test the quality of a plan in front of them
Here’s a fact that should get more attention than it does. The NDIS Commission routinely evaluates the quality of behaviour support plans across Australia. Not their formatting. Not whether they were submitted on time. Their clinical quality, scored against research-based criteria.
And the results, published in the Behaviour Support Plan Quality Snapshot 2025, tell an uncomfortable story. The mean score has remained relatively stable, and it continues to sit in the “underdeveloped” range.
The average behaviour support plan in this country is good enough to create some change, but does not clearly reflect best practice. And that average hasn’t been moving.
This article is about what separates the plans above that line from the plans below it.
How plans get scored, and what “underdeveloped” means.
Plan quality evaluation in Australia builds on research tools developed for exactly this purpose, including work by Vassos and Nankervis that the Commission’s new practice guide cites directly. These tools score a plan against the elements the evidence says make plans effective:
- the quality of the behaviour definitions
- the strength of the functional assessment behind the plan
- whether strategies logically connect to functions
- whether skill teaching is present
- how implementation and review are handled
- and how the person and their network were engaged.
“Underdeveloped” is a band on that scale. It means the plan is above the minimum threshold required to effect some change, but below what best practice looks like. Think of it as a pass without merit. The plan exists, contains real content, and probably helps somewhat. It also probably contains generic strategies, weak links between assessment and intervention, and gaps that show up precisely when the plan is needed most.
The Commission’s answer: it’s the assessment underneath.
The Commission’s response to the stalled scores is revealing, and regular readers of this series already know it. It didn’t publish a plan-writing template. It published the practice guide about assessment.
The reasoning is stated in the guide’s opening pages: behaviour support assessment, including FBA, is the foundation for determining the strategies in a behaviour support plan. High quality plans rely on thorough, well-informed assessments. A plan is downstream of its assessment, and you cannot write your way around a weak one.
It’s worth connecting this to what the evaluation research keeps finding, because the two line up neatly. When plans score poorly, the recurring weaknesses cluster in the same places:
- Behaviours defined vaguely, so nobody can measure anything
- Functions asserted without evidence, or described in non-functions like “control”.
- Strategies with no visible connection to the assessment.
- All skill-teaching absent, so the plan manages behaviour without ever replacing it.
- And plans so long and complex that no team could implement them, a problem the research names directly: plans that attempt to do too much are less likely to be implemented.
Every one of those weaknesses is an assessment weakness wearing plan formatting. Which is why this whole series has spent so long on assessment.
The markers of a quality plan.
Put the evaluation criteria, the practice guide and the research together, and a recognisable picture of quality emerges. Here’s the walk-through, in the order you’d read a real plan.
The person is visible before the behaviour is. A quality plan reads like it’s about someone. Strengths, communication, preferences, what a good life means to them. The guide’s person-centred principle demands it, and its absence is the fastest tell of a template plan.
Behaviours are defined so a camera could verify them. Observable, measurable, with examples. No “meltdowns”, no “non-compliance” standing alone. We’ve written a whole article on this standard, and the evaluation tools score it directly.
The function is stated as a testable hypothesis, with the evidence behind it. Trigger, behaviour, maintaining consequence, function, in a clear summary statement, traceable to data that was actually collected. If the plan cites an FBA, the assessment report should exist as a separate document, which the guide names as best practice.
Every strategy traces back. This is the single most powerful quality test, and anyone can run it. Pick any strategy in the plan and ask: which finding does this respond to? Setting event strategies should trace to identified setting events, preventions to triggers, replacement behaviours to functions. The guide requires a logical and clear relationship on both counts. Strategies that trace to nothing are filler, and filler is what “underdeveloped” is made of.
Something is being taught. A quality plan always builds skills: a functionally equivalent replacement behaviour, communication, coping, independence. A plan with no teaching is a management document, and management documents don’t change trajectories.
Reactive strategies are specific, phased and rights-respecting. Clear early-warning responses, safety-focused peak responses, careful recovery. If restrictive practices appear, they meet the legal conditions, and a genuine fade-out plan exists alongside them.
Implementation is designed, not assumed. Who does what, what gets recorded, who reviews the data, when. The plan is short enough and clear enough that a casual staff member on their second shift could follow it. Implementability is a quality criterion in its own right, and the research treats it that way.
Success is defined beyond behaviour counts. Quality-of-life goals and measures, from baseline onward. The primary goal of PBS should be visible in the plan’s own definition of success.
A quality plan is not a longer plan. In most cases it’s a shorter one, where every element traces to evidence and someone could actually run it.
Questions anyone can ask.
You don’t need clinical training to pressure-test a plan. These five questions do most of the work.
- Could I recognise this person from the plan, or could it be anyone?
- Can I tell exactly what the target behaviour looks like?
- Where’s the evidence for the stated function?
- Pick a strategy at random: what finding does it trace to?
- And what does this plan teach the person to do instead?
If you’re a support coordinator, asking these questions raises the standard across every provider you work with. If you’re a family member, they’re your plan-reading toolkit. And if you’re a provider commissioning behaviour support, they’re how you avoid paying for underdeveloped work.
Final words
There are now thousands of participants living with plans that are good enough to exist and not good enough to change much. The Commission has made its diagnosis, better assessment, and put it in writing.
The encouraging part: quality is checkable. The markers in this article aren’t secrets, and the questions don’t require a qualification. The more people across the sector who know what quality looks like, the harder it becomes for underdeveloped plans to pass unchallenged.
If you’d like a second opinion on a plan for someone you support, that’s a conversation we’re always willing to have.
From the Insight PBS team to yours 🙂
Resources
Resources
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
Contact us
Read more of our blog articles here
Want to work with us? Check out our careers page.
Refer to Insight Positive Behaviour Support here.
Follow us on Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter (X) and TikTok!
Want to discuss or have any questions about Positive Behaviour Support ? Feel free to contact us or request a callback.
Links
🔗 Follow Insight Positive Behaviour Support
Facebook
Instagram
LinkedIn
Youtube
📚 Learn more:
Join our mailing list
Send us an enquiry
Read our blog
Refer to us
Want to work with us?