I-CAN behaviour support: why coping well scores lower
- Julian Vilsten
- 36 minutes ago
- 9 min read
Written by Julian Vilsten, Clinical Neuropsychologist and Specialist Behaviour Support Practitioner. Last updated: August 2026
The I-CAN assessment scores the support around a behaviour, not the behaviour itself. Domain 10, behaviour of concern, rates how often support is needed and what type of support it is, and the two combine into a score out of ten. Neither scale asks how severe the behaviour is, which changes what's worth describing.
That's the difference between describing what someone does when they're distressed and describing what it takes each day to stop them getting there. Only the second is what Domain 10 measures.
Key points
What Domain 10 scores: how often support is needed and what type it is, never how severe the behaviour is.
Why coping well scores lower: a household preventing a behaviour reports the behaviour as rare, so frequency comes out low.
Accommodation is support: shifting the timing, the people and the plans is close supervision on the I-CAN's own definitions.
Restrictive practices flatten the picture: the reference point is the support required without the practice.
What to bring: the daily prevention work, an average day next to a difficult one, and the behaviour support plan read with Domain 10 in mind.
On this page
What is the I-CAN assessment, and when does it start?
The I-CAN is the support needs assessment tool the NDIA has licensed for its new planning approach. It's a semi-structured interview across twelve life domains, run by a trained assessor. Rollout was set for mid-2026, then in April 2026 the NDIA announced a delay to 1 April 2027 to allow more testing of the rules and processes.
The interview runs up to around three hours, and sections that don't apply can be skipped. In the sample report published by the Centre for Disability Studies, which developed the tool, the assessment was completed with the person, a sibling and a house manager.
Plenty of guidance still online carries the old mid-2026 date. Other things aren't settled either: the rules haven't been made, assessor training is in development with the University of Melbourne, and the NDIA has flagged more targeted tools for complex support needs without describing them. The tool is confirmed, the process isn't.
What are the 12 domains in the I-CAN assessment?
The I-CAN covers mobility, domestic life, self care, community social and civic life, communication, learning and applying knowledge, general tasks and demands, lifelong learning, interpersonal interactions and relationships, behaviour of concern, mental and emotional health, and physical health. Most hold four sub-domains. Physical health holds ten.
Domain 10, behaviour of concern, covers hurtful to self, disruptive or offensive, socially excluding behaviour, and damage to property. Those four name who the behaviour affects, including the person themselves.
Behaviour of concern is one domain among twelve, and one score among twelve. For plenty of people it's the main driver of what they need and what gets funded, and the conversation spends longer there. The scoring doesn't follow the conversation though. Departmental material says a budget will be worked out from the assessment report "using a method set out in the new budget method rules", and those rules don't exist. How much weight Domain 10 carries, nobody can say yet.
What does Domain 10 of the I-CAN assessment score?
The I-CAN behaviour of concern domain uses two scales. Frequency of support runs from 5 Continuously down through Frequently, Daily, Weekly and Occasionally to 0 Never. Type of support runs from 5 Pervasive through Extensive, Moderate and Minor to 1 Managed Independence, with 0 for Independent or Not Applicable. The two combine into a support intensity score.
The definitions are more specific than the labels suggest, and they decide the score.
Score | Type of support | What the I-CAN means by it |
|---|---|---|
0 | Not Applicable | The need has been scored elsewhere in the I-CAN, or the domain isn't relevant at the time of assessment |
0 | Independent | The person does not need any support |
1 | Managed Independence | The need is managed through the person's own independent use of aids or equipment, or a simple strategy they use themselves, such as a checklist or phone reminders |
2 | Minor | Brief support from another person: a prompt, reassurance, minor setup, occasional supervision |
3 | Moderate | A series of prompts or instructions, emotional support, more regular supervision, or physical assistance with parts of a task |
4 | Extensive | Extensive support for most or all of a task, close supervision or monitoring, input or assessment by a health professional, or the task done wholly for the person |
5 | Pervasive | Direct simultaneous support from two or more people, such as a 2:1 response to behaviours of concern including administering PRN |
The scale has headroom. A 2:1 response with PRN is Pervasive, close supervision and health professional input is Extensive. Whether it gets used depends on how the support is described.
What nothing scores is the person's experience of it. Not the distress, not the cumulative effect of years, not where the trajectory is heading.
Why does coping well produce a lower I-CAN score?
Coping well gets described as less support than it is, and the I-CAN has a few places where that shows up. A household preventing a behaviour reports the behaviour as rare, so frequency scores low. A contained behaviour can read as not applicable. And the language families use to describe what they do consistently understates it.
Frequency is the first. Asked how often support is needed, a household that has arranged itself around preventing a behaviour will say occasionally. But that answers a different question: how often the behaviour happens. The support preventing it runs continuously, and the two rarely get separated in the conversation.
Not Applicable is the second. It covers a domain not relevant at the time of assessment, and a behaviour held down by good support could read that way.
The third is the language. "We manage" is the most common sentence in this conversation and the one worth being careful with. Not because it gets scored as 1 Managed Independence, which means something specific and different: the person handling the need themselves with aids, equipment, or a strategy like a checklist. A trained assessor shouldn't confuse the two. The problem is that "we manage" sounds like a complete answer, so the description that follows shrinks to match it.
What those households do isn't support as they'd define it. It's accommodation: shifting the timing, the environment, the people, the plans, so the situation doesn't arise. Nobody calls it support, because support sounds like something you provide to a person and accommodation feels like something you arrange around them.
Accommodation is support. Somebody decided years ago that the family doesn't go out late in the day. One worker does personal care because others tried and it didn't go well. A second adult stays home. On the I-CAN's definitions that's close supervision and monitoring, a 4, and it's nowhere near Managed Independence.
It's the pattern we see constantly in positive behaviour support work. So the question worth working through beforehand is what would happen if all of it stopped tomorrow. If the answer is a crisis, the support is real and belongs in the score. Saying so isn't inflation. It's how the assessment measures what's there.
How does a restrictive practice affect the I-CAN score?
A restrictive practice that's working suppresses the behaviour it was introduced to contain, so the I-CAN may record that behaviour as rare, or as not relevant at the time of assessment. The reference point should be the support required without the practice, because a behaviour support plan commits to eliminating it, and fading one means passing back through the baseline.
A locked cupboard, a gate, PRN medication, close supervision. Each exists because a behaviour was dangerous, and with the practice in place the surface answer to how often support is needed comes out low. But reduction is the point, and fading a practice means the behaviour returns for a period needing more support, not less.
So an accurate description of current need has three parts, all documented in the behaviour support plan. The practice and the staffing behind it. The behaviour recorded before the practice was introduced. And the reduction work the plan commits to.
Nobody knows yet how assessors will be trained to handle this. A round-the-clock environmental restriction could reasonably be scored Extensive or Pervasive, because that's what it is. Whether the training goes there is an open question.
How does the I-CAN handle masking and fluctuating support needs?
The I-CAN captures one point in time, and an assessment is close to best-case conditions: novel, quiet, one-off, and usually free of whatever triggers a difficult day. Someone can present well there and be nothing like that at home. Splitting the interview across meetings doesn't fix it, because the second meeting has the same properties.
Working out what's driving a behaviour usually takes weeks of observation, data, and conversations with the people around the person. The I-CAN has three hours for that plus eleven other domains. The risk isn't that the tool is poor. It's that a short conversation can misread the need depending on how it's described, who the assessor is, and what they see.
What helps is saying plainly that the presentation fluctuates, and naming the conditions that flatter it: a novel situation, no triggers present, a calm environment, one professional and nothing else happening. Episodic psychosocial disability works the same way, where a settled fortnight says nothing about the difficult one before it. So does masking, where someone holds it together in front of an unfamiliar professional and then doesn't sleep for two nights, and none of that reaches the assessment. The presentation on the day isn't the presentation being managed the rest of the time.
What documents help most before an I-CAN assessment?
The Centre for Disability Studies, which developed the I-CAN, recommends gathering recent reports beforehand, which also shortens the assessment. The documents that help most describe support rather than incidents: the daily prevention work, who provides it and how often, what an average day looks like alongside a difficult one, and where the behaviour support plan records the baseline.
This mostly falls to families. An incident log records what happened; the prevention work between entries goes unrecorded, and that's most of what Domain 10 asks about:
The daily prevention work: what gets done, how often, by whom, and what the household no longer does.
The average day and the difficult day, with a sense of how often each occurs. Built only from settled weeks it understates the requirement, only from crises it overstates it.
The behaviour support plan, read with Domain 10 in mind. Most plans lead with strategies because they're written for a plan review, and what this domain needs is buried: the baseline behaviour, the restrictive practice authorisation, and the staffing required.
A note on how the presentation varies, and who should attend as a result.
Specialist reports haven't been written out either, though the rules about which ones get considered are narrower than most people assume. We've covered what the Act says about specialist reports separately.
None of this is about painting a worse picture than the real one. The assessment produces a number, that number shapes a budget, and it will be wrong if the biggest support in someone's life goes unmentioned because it stopped looking like support. That's the work worth doing before April 2027. Not rehearsing for an interview. Describing what holds things together.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I bring someone with me to the I-CAN assessment?
The published sample report shows an assessment completed with the person, a family member and a house manager, so it isn't a solo interview by design. Arrangements for the NDIA's version haven't been published.
What if the behaviour hasn't happened recently?
A behaviour that isn't occurring because support is preventing it still represents an ongoing support need. Describe the prevention and what would happen without it.
When does the I-CAN start?
New framework planning was delayed to 1 April 2027, having been scheduled for mid-2026. Rollout is staged, and all NDIS participants aged 16 and over move across over time. No tool has been selected for people under 16.
Sources
About the author
Julian Vilsten is a Clinical Neuropsychologist, Specialist Behaviour Support Practitioner, and the Director of Outcomes Lab. He has over 15 years of experience in mental health and disability services. Outcomes Lab provides NDIS psychology, neuropsychological assessment, and positive behaviour support services in Melbourne, VIC and Port Lincoln, SA.
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