In this bulletin, we talk about what external behaviour support practitioners do.

External behaviour support practitioners are people that:

• need to be on all Quality Assurance Panels
• help decide if a restrictive practice can happen.

In this bulletin, we just call them external practitioners.

A Quality Assurance Panel is a group of people who check behaviour support plans.

They decide if the restrictive practice can happen.

They follow the rules in our policy about restrictive practices.

A behaviour support plan is a document that explains what support a person with disability needs.

External practitioners work on Quality Assurance Panels to:

• check behaviour support plans
• help decide if a restrictive practice can happen.

To do this, they work with the senior manager of the provider who will use the behaviour support plan.

External practitioners don’t help make behaviour support plans.

And they don’t work for the provider who will use the behaviour support plan.

They must follow the rules in our policy.

External practitioners work to make sure that behaviour support plans:

• respect the rights of people with disability

• use restrictive practices for the right reasons.

They make sure behaviour support plans explain that providers must try other ways before they use restrictive practices.

They also make sure behaviour support plans explain that providers must only use restrictive practices:

• when people are at risk

• for the shortest time possible

• no more than is enough to keep people safe

• to have the least effect on the way someone moves or does what they want.

External practitioners must make sure the behaviour support plan includes:

• the experiences of the person with disability and what they need

• what the person with disability is able to do and what they are good at

• what the support workers and carers of the person with disability need.

External practitioners need to make sure the person with disability has helped to create their behaviour support plan.

For example, they need to make sure that a person with disability has had their say about what support they need.

This information helps external practitioners decide if a restrictive practice can happen.

External practitioners must:

• try to make behaviour support plans better

• share their ideas

• check all restrictive practices against the 5 principles in our policy.

Principles are important ideas that we should always think about.

These principles help external practitioners decide if a restrictive practice can happen.

External practitioners must use evidence to make their decisions.

Evidence is proof that something is true.

They should not let anything else affect the way they make their decisions.

A conflict of interest is when someone could affect a decision so the result is better for them.

Quality Assurance Panel members should not have any conflicts of interest when they check a behaviour support plan.

External practitioners should only make fair decisions about if a restrictive practice can happen.

For example, it would be a conflict of interest if an external practitioner helped make a behaviour support plan.

If an external practitioner thinks there might be a conflict of interest, they must:

• tell the other Quality Assurance Panel members before their meeting about the behaviour support plan

• decide how to deal with the conflict of interest.

The senior manager must write a report after the Quality Assurance Panel meeting.

They must include any conflicts of interest in this report.

And they must include what the external practitioner did to deal with the conflict of interest.

We wrote some Easy Read information about:

• conflicts of interest
• Quality Assurance Panels.

You can find this information in bulletin 6 on our website.

wa-doc.easyread.com.au/our-rules-about-restrictive-practices-issue-6/