Guide

Restrictive practice register software for behaviour support

Last reviewed 2026-10-21 against the official sources cited on this page.

In short: NDPRO helps behaviour support practices keep restrictive-practice records, linked BSP references, recorded authorisation status and expiry information visible for review. It is specialist behaviour support operations software that works standalone, with an optional read-only Splose connection.

A Director needs to understand which practice is recorded, which plan it relates to, what authorisation decision is recorded and what requires follow-up. The eight demonstration questions below help you examine those details in NDPRO or any other product.

First, what you are actually buying

A register is not a list of restrictive practices. It is the record that answers, for any participant on any day: which practice, permitted by whom, under what conditions, until when, and where the evidence is.

That distinction decides everything below. A product that stores practices is a list with a search box. A product that stores permissions with lifecycles is a register. Both demo well.

The eight questions

1. "Show me an authorisation as its own record."

Not the practice with an authorisation field on it — the authorisation itself, with the authorising body, the jurisdiction, the dates and the conditions attached.

Thin answer: a text field or a file upload labelled "authorisation". That is an attachment, not a record, and nothing in the system can reason about a PDF.

2. "The participant's plan changes and the practice is replaced. What happens to the old authorisation?"

This is the question that separates the category, and almost nobody asks it. A behaviour support plan is not an authorisation — the two are separate artefacts with separate lifecycles. When a plan changes, check whether the existing authorisation covers the proposed practice and circumstances.

Thin answer: "you'd update the register." Ask who tells them to.

3. "Where does the jurisdiction live?"

Authorisation comes from the state or territory, not from the Commission, and each runs its own process. So the jurisdiction has to be a recorded field.

Thin answer: "we take it from the participant's address." Reasonable most of the time, and the Commission words the test in more than one way — in one place the state where the person lives, in another the state where the practice is used. For a cross-border participant those are not the same answer, and a system that infers cannot record which one applied.

4. "Show me a practice where authorisation is not required in that jurisdiction."

Where a state has no applicable authorisation process, the obligations do not disappear: the practice still has to be in a behaviour support plan, and the specialist provider still lodges that plan with the Commission.

Thin answer: an empty authorisation field. To anyone auditing, a blank cell reads exactly like a missing authorisation. You want "not applicable in this jurisdiction, because —" as a positive state.

5. "What does it do thirty days before an authorisation expires?"

Thin answer: "there's a dashboard." A dashboard is a place you have to remember to visit. Ask what arrives without anyone opening the product, and ask who it goes to.

6. "An unauthorised practice was used yesterday. Walk me through it."

The walkthrough should show how an unauthorised use is escalated for reportable-incident notification under the Incident Management and Reportable Incidents Rules 2018, with the incident record, debrief and follow-up actions. Notification must not wait for or be replaced by the monthly return.

Thin answer: treating monthly reporting as sufficient incident notification. The incident pathway, register and monthly report may each need relevant information; demonstrate both applicable reporting obligations and keep their timing distinct.

7. "Can you produce the monthly return to the Commission?"

Ask it plainly, and get a yes or a no rather than a description of reporting.

8. "Export everything, now."

Ask to watch it happen in the demo rather than to be told it exists. What comes out, in what format, and how long it took. This is the question you will care about most at the moment you care about it least — when you are leaving, or when an auditor wants the file today.

Thin answer: "you can request an export."

The question behind the eight

Every one of them is the same question in different clothes: does the record change when the work changes, or does it change when someone remembers?

A register with four independent clocks — the authorisation's expiry, its conditions, the plan's review date, and the participant's circumstances — cannot be kept accurate by memory. Not because teams are careless. Because there is no natural moment at which someone would think to reconcile them, and the moment you find out they diverged is the moment it costs you.

How NDPRO supports restrictive-practice oversight

NDPRO’s RP overview brings together recorded information such as the participant, linked BSP, jurisdiction, authorisation status, expiry and training flags. Your team can review the underlying pathway when a record needs attention.

The authorisation record supports key dates, conditions and decision or evidence references. These fields document an external process: entering a decision in NDPRO does not grant permission to use a restrictive practice.

For a demonstration, use one synthetic example with a recorded decision, a linked plan and an approaching expiry. Ask to see:

• Where the jurisdiction, decision reference and relevant dates are recorded.
• How the recorded status and follow-up flags appear in the RP overview.
• How a reviewer reaches the participant’s pathway.
• What evidence supports the recorded decision and what still needs checking.

NDPRO does not issue state or territory authorisations, decide whether a practice is legally permitted, or generate or submit the monthly return to the Commission. Applicable incident notification and reporting duties remain separate from maintaining the register.

What happens if the BSP changes? Review whether the existing authorisation covers the proposed practice and circumstances. Record the relevant decision and follow-up. A plan change must not be treated as automatic confirmation that an existing authorisation remains sufficient.

For state-specific context, use the NSW, Queensland and Tasmania guides. To discuss your practice’s workflow, see NDPRO for practice directors.

An export should not be described as a complete clinical audit pack without checking its contents. Database ownership and access arrangements are contractual matters, not implied by an export button. Confirm current feature availability, permissions and the scope of any integration before relying on it.

NDPRO does not issue authorisations, decide whether a practice is legally permitted or make the Commission's suitability decisions.

Does NDPRO submit the monthly return? No. NDPRO supports internal recordkeeping and oversight. The responsible provider must complete the applicable Commission reporting process and verify submission through the required channel.

Score the demonstration against a record, not a feature label

Use the same fictional NSW example with every vendor: one practice recorded against a plan, an authorisation with a source reference, and a proposed change that needs review. No real participant data is needed for a sales demonstration. A changed plan must prompt a check of what the existing authorisation actually covers; software must not assume that it remains sufficient.

Download the software evaluation worksheet and keep the demonstration date and product version beside each answer. “Planned” belongs in a separate decision from “shown”. NDPRO publishes this checklist commercially; it should be tested against the same standard as any other supplier.

What to do with this

Take the eight questions to whichever products you are considering, including this one. The answers to 2, 4 and 6 will separate them faster than any feature comparison, because they are the questions a thin product has no rehearsed answer for.

And before any demo: pick one participant with a regulated restrictive practice in place and answer questions 1 and 5 about your current system. Whatever you buy has to be better than that, and until you have measured it you do not know what better means.

---

Related: what a register has to hold, field by field · Module 2A, outcome by outcome · keeping a PBS capability record current.

Note on sources: the regulatory statements above are drawn from the Commission's Rules for implementing providers and the Supplementary module: Implementing behaviour support plans, both cited in the linked guides. Read those rather than any summary, including this one.