An overview of changes to behaviour support plan lodgement and restrictive practices, including managing plans, provider actions, authorisation information and monthly reporting.
Good afternoon everyone. My name's Alex. We will just sit tight for a minute or so to let people make their way into the meeting. So bear with us. We will get started at about two minutes past four. Wonderful. Well, we might make a start. Thank you all for joining us this afternoon.
My name is Alex Lewis. I am the Assistant Commissioner responsible for Data Change and Program Management here at the NDIS Commission. And I'm really excited to be able to join you this afternoon to talk in quite some detail about our new provider portal coming later this year. And in particular, the session today is going to focus in on the capabilities of the portal for behaviour support and restrictive practises.
Now, before we get into the session proper, I would just like to take a moment to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land that we are gathered on. For me here in Canberra, that is the Ngunnawal people. And I'd like to extend that respect to the traditional custodians of all of the lands from which you are joining our meeting this afternoon, and to any Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people who might be with us this afternoon. I will also take a moment to acknowledge all people with lived experience of disability and those who support them.
Just a little bit of housekeeping for our session this afternoon. We've got our wonderful Auslan interpreters online. If you would like to access closed captions, they are available within Microsoft Teams. If you go to the More menu, the three ellipses at the top, down to Language and speech, you can find the option to turn on live captioning there. We are also recording the session this afternoon, and for that reason, we've turned off the chat and QA functionality just to protect everybody's privacy.
If you do have any questions or feedback for us after the session today, please don't hesitate to reach out to us. Our email address is on the screen. There it is, nqsc.dartprogram@ndiscommission.gov.au. If you do reach out to us that way, we will look to answer questions that come through or respond to any inquiries on our Provider toolkit. There's a Frequently Asked Questions section there and so we will make sure we publish that information in case anybody else has the same question and just hasn't gotten around to asking us yet.
I'll talk to you a little more later on in the session this afternoon about our Provider toolkit. So you understand all the things that are there today and coming over the coming weeks and months.
In terms of our agenda for this afternoon, most of our session is going to be focused on the behaviour support and restrictive practises overview. My wonderful colleague Michael is here, and he's going to talk us through all of the exciting new capabilities that you can look forward to in the system. And as I said, I'll come back at the end of the session and just give you a little bit more of a spiel around the Provider toolkit and what comes next. But we've got lots to get through and only a relatively short period of time.
So without any further ado, I'm going to hand over to Michael, who's going to take us through the new capabilities in the new portal. Over to you, Michael.
Thanks so much, Alex. Welcome to this webinar on the Commission's new Provider portal. The session will outline the process for lodging a Behaviour Support Plan, uploading evidence of authorisation for restrictive practices and completing monthly reports regarding restrictive practice use.
The first part of the webinar will focus on how to lodge a Behaviour Support Plan. Firstly, I'd like to talk about the way different statuses will work in the new portal. Behaviour Support and Restrictive Practices involves a number of key events and actions and to capture these more clearly, our statuses have been refined to better align to these events that they're intended to represent. Planned Status has been refined to a more streamlined and automated set of status changes that relate to the Behaviour Support provider’s role, only. Each implementing provider can accept or reject a BSP.
The status of each implementing providers response is shown on the BSP. If rejected, a new BSP will have to be lodged. However, future releases will include the ability to make edits following a rejection from the implementing provider.
A Behaviour Support provider will not need to close a plan before they can lodge a new one. The system will move the previous plan to the status of ‘Superseded’ automatically. When a comprehensive plan is due to follow an interim plan, the interim plan status will move to ‘Comprehensive due’.
When a comprehensive plan is due for review, it will move to ‘Due for review’. The status can also be manually changed to two other options which is ‘RRP's eliminated’ or ‘Service provision ceased’. This is done by the Behaviour Support provider and basically stops those due for reviews/overdue for review statuses from lingering. So if you're not going to lodge any more plans because you're not using any more restrictive practices in the plans, you can select ‘RRP eliminated’ or if you're not working with that participant anymore, you can change the status to ‘Service provision ceased’ and that won't change anything for the implementing provider in the system, their monthly reporting we'll still continue.
Separate to the plan status., each implementing provider on a plan will have their own status on that plan recorded on that plan. And basically that's either accept or reject the BSP and the status of each of those implementing providers response is shown to the lodging provider on the BSP and also internally to the Commission. If you reject a plan, a new BSP does have to be lodged. However, our future releases will include the ability to make edits following a rejection from an implementing provider.
We'll first start with how a BSP is lodged in the new portal. When you log in as a Behaviour Support Provider to lodge a plan, you'll see this dashboard and a list view of all your BSP’s. So this dashboard has some filters on it and so based on those statuses where they change to due, comprehensive, due or due for review, you can use those this dashboard to filter and it will highlight plans, for example, that are due for review.
To lodge a plan, you'll firstly search using the NDIS number or the participant's last name. The search will return any BSP’s that you've previously lodged or it will tell you that you haven't lodged them. If you haven't lodged one before, you then click on ‘Lodge a new BSP’ button.
If you do not have a participant record for the participant, you will need to go to the Participants page and create that record. So that's separate from the BSP lodgement and will be a way of managing your participants. Once it's created, it is used for all your reporting requirements.
When you click on ‘Lodge a new BSP’, you'll be taken to the first step of the lodgement process. There is also a step tracker on the top right-hand side of the page to guide you through each step. You must first confirm that you have the correct participant details. The person completing the lodgement is the logged in user and that's the person that's authorised to lodge the plans by the Behaviour Support provider. That person can be an admin person, it can be a practitioner or a manager.
The practitioners are added separately at Step 3, so it can be whatever user you want to use to manage the lodgement of your BSPs. When you're lodging a plan, only an interim or a comprehensive plan type can be selected. The previous plan type (RP record, No BSP) has been removed.
Any use of a restrictive practice that is not in the BSP or authorised and authorised must be reported as a reportable incident as a URP. When an interim plan is selected, you'll upload the copy of the plan and you enter the engagement date and the plan dates.
When you select Comprehensive Plan, you'll be able to also upload the Behaviour Support assessment. Using the practitioner's P number., you can search and select the practitioner who completed the assessment. To locate the relevant practitioner, they must be considered suitable as an NDIS Behaviour Support Practitioner and it must also be a worker that's linked to you as a provider.
You then upload a copy of the comprehensive plan and enter the engagement date and plan day. As I mentioned before, for comprehensive plans, the plan review date will appear and this will auto populate to 12 months from the plan date. This is the date that is used to when the status will move to ‘Due for review’.
You can use the navigation buttons at the bottom of the page to move to the next step or save as a draft if you need to return later to complete the lodgement. Just to clarify some of the information around key dates. So Engagement date is the date that you're engaged to develop the BSP as specified in your service agreement. The Plan date is the date the NDIS Behaviour Support practitioner completed the development of the BSP. This is when the BSP becomes in force and should be consistent with the practitioners dated signature on the BSP.
Comprehensive Due - it is expected that a comprehensive plan will follow an interim plan within 6 months of the engagement date that you entered in. Comprehensive Due for review: For comprehensive Plans. Comprehensive plans must be reviewed at least every 12 months or earlier if there's a change in circumstances.
Step 3. So using the practitioner P number, you can search for the practitioners to add to the plan. Their name and details will be auto populated onto the form. In order to protect individual’s privacy, only practitioners linked to your organisation as a worker through worker screening can be selected. The phone number and email contact details can also be updated here, but they won't update anywhere else.
The supervisor of the practitioner who developed the plan can also be added to the plan. For supervisors that are also NDIS Behaviour Support practitioners, the search and select function can be used to easily add them to the plan. If the supervisor is not suitable, as an NDIS Behaviour Support practitioner, you can select ’No’ and then enter their details. If the practitioner who's going to support the implementation of the BSP is also someone different to the practitioner that developed the plan, which can be the case, then you can add their details here as well. If it's the same person, then you simply select ‘Yes’ and it will auto populate the same information.
In the development of a Behaviour Support Plan, consultation with the participant and key stakeholders is a key legislative requirement. You'll be required to confirm whether consultation has been completed in relation to the BSP you are lodging. If you answer no, you'll be prompted to provide a reason.
Step four of the lodgement is where you identify the key parties who are going to be implementing the plan and may be using restrictive practices contained in the plan. In addition to listing registered implementing providers, this step allows you to add the category of family and non-NDIS service settings. No further details about family or the non-NDIS service settings is collected at this point. However, any restrictive practices in the plan relevant to those settings can be then entered later on in Step 8.
Information about unregistered providers using restricted practices can also be added here. You must select at least one category of people or providers involved in implementation. To add a registered implementing provider, fuzzy search is available using either the provider business name or ABN. You'll select the provider from the search options and then confirm the relevant service outlet and click Save. The names of each provider you add will appear on the list. Family or non NDIS service settings will appear once on the list as a nominal category only. Details about unregistered providers can also be added here.
To ensure we accurately identify the organisation who is using the restrictive practices, you must enter the providers ABN. The system will then confirm the details from the Australian Business Register. You can then add contact information and any other information that is relevant.
Importantly, the use of regulated restrictive practices by unregistered providers remains an unlawful practice. Collecting these details at the point of lodgement will support the NDIS Commission's oversight and compliance monitoring activities.
Step 5 confirms consent to access information about the participants URP reports. This is specific only to step five of the lodgement process. By confirming consent, you will then be able to view URP reports by the registered providers that were added to the plan when you go to the next step. If you don't have consent, you can still add restrictive practices in the plan manually.
This is step 6. So if you have that consent, then this is where you'll see the URPs that were reported by any registered providers that you've added to the plan. It'll only do it for the last 6 months. Where multiple URP reports are found in the system, they'll be summarised down into a single report based on restrictive practice type, subtype and admin type. If the URP information is the same as the restrictive practice that is being included in the BSP, you can select the URP and it will pre-populate that restrictive practice information from the URP record into the BSP. If the restrictive practice that is added to the plan is not reflected in the URP report, then do not select it. You can add the correct details of the restrictive practice in the next step.
Step 7 is where you add the add the restrictive practices contained in the BSP and you simply click on the ‘Add’ button to add them. When you click on the ‘Add’ button, a pop-up window will display where you can enter the information about the restrictive practice. There's a new field labelled ‘Name’. A specific information about the restrictive practice can be entered in a free text to help distinguish it from other restrictive practices that you've added to the plan.
The restrictive practice type and subtypes can be selected from the drop downs and the admin type. When adding a chemical restraint, you can search for the medication name by typing the first letters of the medication name, either the generic or brand name can be selected. For PRN medications., the dosage and unit of measurement is entered. If there is more than one PRN medication used or multiple levels of a PRN medication, enter each one separately and use the name field to identify. Prescriber details are also entered.
For routine chemical restraints, use the frequency options to select the frequency for that medication is administered. The specific dosages for each administration can then be entered. For example, if a medication is given twice a day in the morning and the evening, then you'd select daily, enter 2 times and then you'll have the fields will display to enter the first administration which would be the morning dose and the second administration which would be the evening dose.
In relation to PRN restricted practices, each provider, any provider that's uses any of those PRN rescue practices is going to need to report on them. So you need to include all the different ways PRN might be used and then you simply link those to the different providers that will use them later on. With regards to routine restricted practices, when you set them up, because they follow through into the monthly reporting schedule for the implementing providers, you only need to set up for example, medication as per the prescription. And when an implementing provider reports on it, they can just select and I'll talk a bit more about this when I talk about monthly reporting, but they will just select ‘used as per plan’ and that can include situations where they may have only provided services for part of that month when they do the monthly reporting. So we don't need, we won't need different parts of different times or different dosages or different frequencies for different. It doesn't need to be set up in that way. You just pop it in there and we kind of just take it that a standard practice that you provide, you use the practice in accordance with the plan for the times and dates that you actually provided the service.
Once all the people and providers involved in implementation are added and you click on ‘link RPs’ to link the restrictive practice.
So that'll show the, when you click on that ‘link RPs’, it'll open up a little box that will have those will have the restrict practices that you've added to the plan. And then you simply just tick on the ones that are relevant for that implementing provider. And if you have no implementing providers, you'll have family. If it's just a family implemented plan and you just select the practices that the family are going to be using. Then this takes us to the final step where you select the declaration, confirm you agree with the declaration and then submit the plan.
At this stage, once the plan is lodged, no further changes can be made to the plan. And if the plan is rejected by one or more implementing providers, then a new plan will need to be lodged. This is expected to be a temporary arrangement.
We are looking at some future functionality to allow where a plan is rejected, specific updates or changes can be made without having to re-enter the information.
Once lodged, you'll receive confirmation of the lodgement ID, which is will also become the plan ID. The behaviour support provider will receive confirmation notification via email and the registered implementing providers will also receive an email that a plan that's been lodged for them.
The email addresses that are used for the portal for the behaviour support are the behaviour support providers primary email contact, as well as the email address of the user who lodged that plan. And for the implementing providers, the email contact is the provider's primary email contact recorded on their registration.
When you log in as an implementing provider, a different dashboard will display. The dashboard will display numbers of BSP’s per authorisation for the restrictive practices in the plan has or is about to expire, as well as flagging any plans that are due for review. Importantly, when a plan gets lodged and comes across to the implementing provider, initially it will be unlinked and this is displayed on the implementing provider dashboard under the unlinked BSP number.
This just means that the first step when you receive a BSP in the portal, just to make sure that you're not getting the wrong participant or information about some other participant is accidentally becoming available to you. The first step that you will undertake when you receive a BSP is you'll get an email notification that it's come to you and then you'll also be able to locate it on that list and it will be in a status of unlinked. And then you'll just click on the link button, so you'll navigate into the BSP by clicking on the ID and then you'll click on the link button. And that would, that's just a system safeguard to ensure that this participant is someone that you have in your service and that you're expecting to receive a BSP for. If it's the wrong participants, then you can reject it, which will remove it from your view and you won't be able to see that BSP any further.
Once you've linked the BSP, all the information will be available to you. So the restrictive practices listed on the plan will be viewable as well as their plan attachment as well. Once you've reviewed all the information and around the restrictive practices, you can then either accept that BSP or you can reject the BSP. If you reject it, you can also enter in a reason as to why you rejected it, which will go back to the behaviour support provider. Once it's rejected, you will no longer be able to see that BSP, and a new BSP does need to be lodged if you're expected to continue providing supports to that person. That is expected to be a temporary arrangement as we are looking at some functionality in our future releases that will allow more editability in those scenarios. If all the details are correct and the BSP is accepted, then the next step when the time comes, the next thing you may need to do as an implement provider is once you've obtained the authorisation (if not already), you then click on the upload restrictive practice authorisation tab, which is where you can upload that evidence of authorisation.
There's two ways of uploading the evidence. So there's two options. So you can select ‘upload one authorisation document’ and that will when you enter, when you select that option, you'll upload just one file and the status, start date and end date will update all of the restrictive practices that are listed on that plan. Alternatively, you may select ‘upload individual authorisation documents’ and this is relevant for providers that are in different jurisdictions where different authorisation arrangements apply.
So where you need to give specific information about the authorisation of each restricted practice, you simply select that option and then you just use the open and close buttons to upload that file and enter the authorisation status and start and end dates.
For implementing providers, there is a dedicated summary page which is available to view and manage all your restrictive practices across all your Behaviour Support Plans and it clarifies their authorisation status, so you can use that list to search for a specific participant or a specific Behaviour Support Plan.
You can also use the filters Authorised or Unauthorised which will give you a list of all practices that you haven't yet uploaded evidence of authorisation for. The next step for implementing providers is to provide monthly reports regarding the use of the restricted practice. This is now managed all from one page, so all monthly reporting for all the restrictive practices across all your Behaviour Support Plans are all populated into this one view, one list view.
To navigate that information, there's a series of filters located at the top of the page which can allow if you want to search just for one participant and do their monthly reports, you can use the search function to do that. What'll happen is the list will default to all Due and Overdue reports, and you can use the filters to look at your submitted reports or any open reports which are ones that will allow PRN’s to be reported during the month.
A report will appear on the list as with a status of Due once the authorisation information has been updated. A report is generated for each month based on the authorisation start and end dates. So where the authorisation start date falls within a month, then a report would be generated for that month and subsequent months up until the authorisation end date. Reports are due within 5 business days following the month. So for example a report for a restrictive practice that was authorised during the month of July is due by the 7th of August.
After that day passes, the status of the report will change to overdue, so you'll be able to clearly see which monthly reporting is due or overdue. To complete a monthly report, you'll click on the ‘Open’ button. A pop-up window will display for a routine restrictive practice. You'll select the usage that applies to that month. So as I mentioned before, if you work with the participant for the whole month and it's a routine restrictive practice you'll simply select ‘used as per plan’.
There are a number of other options available for you to use to report accurately. So ‘used as per plan’ just means, however the practice is detailed in that Behaviour Support Plan, you used it consistently with that and it didn't become a URP. You simply just select ‘used as per plan’. There's option for ‘Varied use’, so if there was some sort of change to the way the practice was used, so for example, environmental strength that's used for one hour a day was used for only half an hour a day, or it was used for two hours a day, then you can select ‘increase’ or ‘decreased’ as an option as well as also ‘other’, if some other circumstance happened. You can report the practice that was not used for the month.
You can also report a practice that was eliminated. So if a practice has been ceased and you're not expecting to use that practice again, then you can put the report as ‘eliminated’ and no more reports will be generated by the system for that practice, for that BSP. You can identify if no service was provided that month and so the practice wasn't used, but it's not that the practice has stopped, it's just that you didn't actually work with the person for that month. You can also select ‘service provision has ceased’, which will also stop any further monthly reports generating and indicates that you're actually not working with that person anymore. So we were able to clearly see that there's no more reporting because you're not involved that participant’s supports.
As I mentioned, if you select ’Varied use’, there's a couple of additional options to indicate whether that increased, decreased or if there was an ‘other’. There's an ‘other’ option with a free text field for you to enter in. There's also just a confirmation question just to flag that if you if there was a change in the use of the restrict practice, if that change was outside of the protocols of the BSP or outside of any conditions of authorisation that apply, the use may have become a URP, in which case you would need to go and report it as a URP as well.
For monthly reporting in relation to PRN restricted practice, the options are slightly different to routine. If the PRN restricted practice was not used at all, eliminated or no service was provided or service ceased, then you can select those options and that's the report for that particular month. If the PRN was used, then each use must be recorded and entered into the monthly report. To do this, you select ‘Individual usage’. All PRN’s are reported on an individual usage basis. To record a PRN use, you enter the date and time of the use, and you also need to select the worker that used that PRN. You also confirm whether or not the use was in accordance with the BSP, and of course if it wasn't, it may be reportable as a URP. To add that information into the report, you click ‘Add PRN Usage Instance’ button. Each time you add a usage, it will populate into a list above under ‘Usage Details’. Once at the end of the month when the report is due (so you can enter these in at any time during the month if you wish, or you can save them all up and enter them in at the end of the month), but what you do need to do is at the end of the month, submit that report and that'll change the report from ‘Due’ to ‘Submitted’.
And that's the end of my part of the presentation. That was pretty quick. That's the main functionality that we have built for our next release in relation to the Behaviour Support Plan lodgement and the monthly reporting and the uploading of authorisation.
Thank you, Michael. Heaps of content covered. There are lots and lots of detail, really exciting I think to see the capabilities of the new portal. And I did just want to remind people we are recording the session and there will be the ability to access that recording through our Provider Toolkit on the website. In case you wanted to go back and have a look check in on some of that detail, refresh yourself. There was a lot covered in there. So thank you, Michael.
Just before we do close out the session, I did flag at the beginning that I wanted to just spend a few moments talking to you about the resources that will be in place to support the transition to the new provider portal. The Provider Toolkit, available now on our website, is the central hub for all information and support materials as we head towards go-live. It's a range of resources there that will help you understand the capabilities of the new portal and prepare to use the new system. There's a portal preview video which is live now. Some of you might have had a chance to have a look at that already, along with a high-level factsheet and some Easy Read resource that give you an overview. We are publishing recordings of the webinar series that we are running, and over the coming weeks we will continue to expand the toolkit with additional resources including Quick Reference Guides, journey maps, and those Frequently Asked Questions that I mentioned back at the beginning.
Please do reach out to us if you do have any questions or feedback on these sessions. We will be very responsive to those and want to make sure that the content that we're delivering in the toolkit is responding to the questions that you've got. This is part of the webinar series that we are running. We've had a range of webinars last week focusing on the reportable incidents capabilities of the new portal and some overview sessions earlier in July. There are still more sessions to come, so there will be webinars later in August focusing on the registration or re-registration processes in the new portal. So if that is something of interest to you or maybe someone else in your organisation, keep an eye out. Please register for our mailing list. That's the key way that we are disseminating information about the go-live and it's the best way to stay up to date.
We are committed to making sure that the resources we're publishing on the toolkit are as accessible as possible. So we're developing materials in Plain English and Easy Read formats. We're making Auslan supported content available where appropriate to make sure we're supporting a broad range of users. In addition to the resources available, there is built in guidance in the new portal and you'll see that in some of the short videos we're publishing that will help you complete those processes.
Contextual help text prompts and links out to the relevant guidance material will be available to make sure that using the new portal is as easy as possible.
There will also be a dedicated support period after go-live. We'll make more information available about that Hypercare period on the toolkit in the coming weeks, but it will be clear where you'll need to go. If you do have any concerns with how the system is operating or if you need some further support navigating those new processes, we'll make sure that that is crystal clear so that we can resolve any issues quickly and support you to become familiar with the new system and using those new processes. So please do take a look at the toolkit. We are progressively publishing those materials, as I said, over the coming weeks. So keep checking back to it and please register for that mailing list so we can let you know as we get a little closer to go-live and when there's exciting new materials available. The URL is on the screen there and we will keep pointing you in that direction throughout this period, in the lead up to go-live.
Finally, in terms of what's next, as I said, the website is the place to go for any of that information. The email address, if you've got any questions, again, is NQSC.dartprogram@ndiscommission.gov.au. There are, as I mentioned, additional webinars coming, more resources dropping over the next few weeks. So please do keep in contact with us.
But that is the webinar for today. Thank you again for taking the time.
We really appreciate it. We hope it's been informative, and we will look forward to seeing you at the next webinar or the next lot of events in the series. Thanks everyone.