Restrictive Practices and PBS Fundamentals

A cupboard in a shared house is kept locked because one resident used to eat everything in it at once. He gets the food at set times. The cupboard stays locked the rest of the day. Nobody on the team calls it anything. It is just how the house runs, and it has run that way long enough that new staff inherit it as a house rule rather than a decision anyone made.

That is an environmental restraint. It limits a person's access to something because of the way he behaves. Whether it should continue is not the worker's call, and neither is ending it. But recognising it, and raising it, is squarely the worker's job, and it is the part that most often does not happen.

What actually counts as a restrictive practice

A restrictive practice limits what a person can do, where they can go, or what they can reach, because of how they behave. Three questions catch most of them. Is freedom being limited, whether that is movement, access or choice? Is the limit there because of the person's behaviour, rather than a genuine medical reason? Would we do the same thing to a person without disability in the same situation?

When all three answers point the same way, a worker is probably looking at a restrictive practice, however ordinary it feels on the shift. The point of the three questions is not to make workers the judge of it. It is to stop the thing being invisible.

The five kinds the Commission regulates

The NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission regulates five restrictive practices: chemical restraint, mechanical restraint, physical restraint, environmental restraint and seclusion. Support workers are not asked to authorise any of them. They are asked to be able to name what they are seeing, because naming it is the first half of recognising it.

In practice, the ones workers meet most often are the quiet ones. A locked cupboard is environmental restraint. A bedroom door latched from the outside overnight is the kind of arrangement the Commission's guidance would treat as seclusion. Standing in a doorway so a person cannot leave until they calm down is generally treated as physical restraint, and it is not something a worker decides to do in the moment.

When one is allowed, and who decides

The Commission's position is that a regulated restrictive practice may only be used where it has been authorised through the relevant state or territory process and is set out in the person's behaviour support plan, used as a last resort, in the least restrictive form that will work, and for the shortest time, while the plan works towards removing the need for it altogether.

That plan is written by an NDIS behaviour support practitioner. It is not written by a worker, a team leader, a family member or a house routine. Positive behaviour support, the approach the plan comes out of, is mostly about the proactive strategies that reduce the difficult moments in the first place. The restrictive part, where there is one, is the last page of the story, not the first.

Where the worker's role begins and ends

Narrow, on purpose, and important. Recognise a practice for what it is. Follow an authorised plan exactly, including under pressure, and never apply one person's plan to another. Report anything that is not in a plan. What a worker never does alone is authorise, design or end a restrictive practice, and that includes ending a bad one on their own initiative.

The harder versions of this are predictable. A colleague, sometimes a senior one, says "just block the door". A family member says "lock his door so he does not wander". A moment feels genuinely unsafe and improvising looks like the only option. In each case the answer is the same: acknowledge the pressure, do not enact the practice, use what the plan gives you, and bring it back to the team leader.

Reporting, and how much certainty you need

Less than most workers think. The Commission treats the unauthorised use of a regulated restrictive practice as a reportable incident, with notification timeframes and processes set by the Commission, and those obligations sit with the provider. What sits with the worker is a clean, factual, brief record of what happened to the person, and escalating it. Whether it formally counts is for the team leader and the practitioner to work out, not for a worker to resolve alone at 9pm.

Report the practice, not the colleague. That distinction matters, and it is the difference between something being looked at properly and something turning into a personnel argument that helps nobody. It is also, honestly, the part that costs workers something. The first report is the hardest one.

What this course does and does not do

CORA's course Restrictive Practices & PBS Fundamentals, part of the Compliance Foundations stream in the course library, runs around half an hour across three lessons and includes seven assessed decision points. It works through what a restrictive practice is, the five regulated kinds, the last resort and authorised-and-in-a-plan principle, the everyday routines that hide a practice, and how to report unauthorised use cleanly. The scenarios put those skills against the moments that actually trip people up: the long-normalised locked cupboard, the colleague pushing for a doorway block, a family member's pressure, and a practice witnessed mid-shift.

It does not teach anyone how to apply a restrictive practice, and it is not a substitute for a behaviour support plan, for a state or territory authorisation process, or for an NDIS behaviour support practitioner. It builds a worker's knowledge and judgement about recognition, duties, reduction and reporting. It does not assess or assert behaviour support competency, and CORA never makes that claim. Your own qualified assessor does that, on the evidence you hold.

For the provider-side view of what the rules require and where training sits inside it, Restrictive Practices Training for NDIS Workers is worth reading alongside this. If you are mapping this against the rest of Compliance Foundations for your team, try the Pathway Builder, free and no sign-up required, or request a demo.

Sources and further reading

• Behaviour support and restrictive practices, NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission
• Reportable incidents, NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission
• Restrictive practices training for NDIS workers, CORA Workforce
• Understanding behaviour of concern, CORA Workforce

This page is general information for support workers and providers, not legal advice. Always follow the person's behaviour support plan, your organisation's policies, and the authorisation requirements that apply in your state or territory.