How to Prepare your Professional Development Plan for BSP Registration
Rebecca Kim
Introduction
This article is a specifically going to talk about my experience supporting prospective Behaviour Support Practitioners (BSPs) to prepare their Professional Development (PD) Plans for their registration application to the NDIS Quality & Safeguards Commission.
It can be difficult to understand what they’re looking for but over the years I’ve been able to see what’s accepted versus what’s pushed back, and almost all of our Supervisees receive no feedback about their PD Plans. Believe it or not, that’s not a bad thing here as it means it’s ‘passed’ and been considered acceptable.
So what is a PD Plan - more commonly called a Continuing Professional Development (CPD) Plan - and what does it need to include?
Firstly, a PD Plan is exactly how it sounds on the label. It’s your plan to continue developing as a professional. Within the BSP registration context, there’s another layer as, if you’re applying under the New Entry Level pathway (see the previous article), this will specifically serve as your plan to develop the capabilities you need to reach your Core Level within the PBS Capability Framework. If you’re applying through the Self-Assessment pathway, this might be your plan to reach Core, Proficient, or other levels. It depends what level you’re submitting yourself as with endorsement from a Supervisor. If you’re not sure, ask your Supervisor for advice.
Reviewing the PBS Capability Framework
Once you’ve worked out what level of capability you need to review, you can find it within the Self-Assessment Tool provided by the NDIS Quality & Safeguards Commission. Or shameless plug - we have free downloadable copies of each level’s capabilities within the additional resources on our Member’s Site which is also free to join.
So using the example of a New Entry Level practitioner (since this is the majority of cases), you’d go to the Core level capabilities to start. There’s quite a few (around 144 from memory) so this is going to take a while. My recommendation is to go through each of the 7 sections and to consider honestly if you understand what the capability is and whether you’ve actually got knowledge about or experience in this. There’s absolutely no shame in saying you don’t understand or you don’t think you can do it - you’ve never done this job before and it’s the whole point of preparing this PD Plan! It’s much better to identify a gap and fill it while you’re in your early career as a practitioner, than miss it and have it impact your practice - there’s honestly no better time than now.
While you’re reviewing and reflecting, pay attention to whether each one is a knowledge capability or whether it’s a skill/experience capability; it’s the difference between being able to explain it comprehensively to others versus having gone through it directly. Also, don’t panic if you’re confused by some of the jargon, it took me a while to make some of the connections too and I’ve been around since before this process first started! Your Supervisor can help you understand anything that doesn’t make sense.
While you’re reviewing the capabilities, my recommendation would be to tick the boxes against each capability as ‘Met’, ‘Developing’, or ‘Not Met’ as you review them all. It will make it easier when it comes time to write your PD Plan. Once you’ve gone through each capability, you can now get started on this.
Writing your PD Plan
So now you’re finally ready to get started.
If a template hasn’t been provided to you from your organisation or your Supervisor, you need to decide which template you’d like to use. There’s the NDIS Quality & Safeguards Commission version within the Self-Assessment Resource Guide, or if you like, you can use our template. It’s found free within our Store for download.
The Commission’s template and ours start off the same. You need to explain who you are and provide dates this plan will be applicable. Then it’s time to focus on some of the strengths you might’ve identified as you were going through the capabilities. Was there an area of knowledge or skill that you felt more confident in? Maybe an area where you were able to tick most of the capabilities as met? If so, these are likely to be the strengths you have coming in as a new practitioner and you can detail these in this section.
Our template also wants to identify whether you have any special areas of knowledge or experience outside of the capabilities, and particular areas that interest you. This could be where you express your competency in supporting neurodiverse youth or training experience as a school teacher. For interests, has something in particular caught your attention and you want to focus on it? Maybe you’d like to work with particular communities or delve deeper into a particular diagnosis. Taking even a short time to reflect on these things can help you stay more focused on the kind of PBS Practitioner you want to become and the kind of people you aim to support. Though don’t stress if you don’t have any special areas yet; it takes time for some people.
After this point, our template sets out each of the 7 capability sections that Core and Proficient both follow. This makes it easier to outline which capabilities you plan to target and show that you’ve reviewed the PBS Capability Framework to complete this.
So at this point while you’re staring at the next blank pages of the plan, I would recommend selecting any capability from your Self-Assessment Tool review which you’ve marked as ‘Not Met’ and adding it as a capability to target under the right section, e.g. Interim Response. If you didn’t have any ‘Not Met’, perhaps you’d like to further explore those you marked as ‘Developing’.
It’s a good idea to be specific about the capability too; you can even use the wording straight from the Framework. Then after you’ve added all the capabilities in, you need to explain how you’re going to develop them. This is one of the trickiest parts because you haven’t even started the job so how do you know what kinds of reports you need to write and resources you need to read? I often feel this part is like having to write an essay about something you’ve never done, and the best way to get through it is to talk to your Supervisor for ideas, go through the NDIS Commission website (particularly the Behaviour Support and Restrictive Practice webpages), and look at online resources and training such as NDS’ Zero Tolerance Framework (I recommend Foundations of PBS, Restrictive Practice, and Trauma-Informed Care).
You might also find useful:
State/Territory and Federal legislation about Restrictive Practice and Behaviour Support
State/Territory Guardianship websites
Deciding with Support training and resources
The Right Direction resources
Promoting Positive Behaviour Support Practice training
Supporting Effective Commission training modules from the NDIS Commission
There’s honestly heaps of information and resources out there if you have a look around and use the right keywords, though of course it can feel like wandering around in the dark trying to find the right light switch.
The last part of this PD Plan is choosing a time frame for when you plan to have achieved the capability. Thankfully, the Self-Assessment Tool mostly goes in the same order as the PBS process itself - from when you start the Interim Response (0-1 months), then Functional Assessment (3-5 months), Planning (5-6 months), then Implementation and Know It Works (7 months+). Restrictive Practice is trickier as it’s dependent on your involvement in working with a participant where this is occurring. Lastly, Professional Development is something which you’ve been working towards since you signed with a Supervisor and started this plan, so arguably one of the easiest sections to achieve earlier.
Just make sure to give yourself leeway so you have time to seek employment and actually start working with participants; this might not happen straight away so take the pressure off. The referral and onboarding process itself can take a few weeks too, so add time for that to give yourself a more realistic time frame.
As a note, the Commission’s template also has a section where you can record the outcome / evidence of progress within the PD Plan itself. I personally prefer to keep this somewhere else in a Professional Development Log/Record to allow room for reflection, however it’s up to individual preference. The most important thing is that it does get completed, evidenced, and reviewed with your Supervisor so you can keep moving towards your next Framework Level.
Okay, you’re finished your PD Plan - now what?
You and your Supervisor both need to sign off on it. Once you’re ready, send it to them for review and signing. They might come back to you first with some tips to consider; I often suggest resources, training, or sources of future evidence that I know will help my Supervisee.
When the plan is signed by both of you, it’s ready to go as part of your BSP registration application - Congratulations! Make sure to check out our other articles to read more about the steps for registration.
