How NDIS quarterly funding periods affect behaviour support hours
- Julian Vilsten
- Aug 11
- 8 min read
Written by Julian Vilsten, Clinical Neuropsychologist and Specialist Behaviour Support Practitioner. Last updated: August 2026.
NDIS behaviour support funding used to come as one amount for the year. Now it's split across quarterly funding periods. Allocations run between 30 and 120 hours a year depending on complexity, so a common 60-hour plan releases 15 hours a quarter. The total hasn't changed. The first three months just have to stand on their own.
Two things decide whether that's a problem. How much funding sits in the first period, which most people don't know they can advocate for before the plan is written. And what your practitioner does with it once it's there.
Spend the first quarter on assessment and report writing, and you get little you can use until the second quarter opens. However, assessment and intervention don't have to be sequential, and in most cases they shouldn't be. The first quarter should leave you, and everyone who's there day to day, with something you can do differently.
Key points
Funding periods split the year: behaviour support funding is now released in quarterly blocks, so a 60-hour plan opens with about 15 hours.
The total hasn't changed: unspent hours roll forward within the same plan, but money never moves backward to the quarter you're in.
The first quarter costs the most: assessment, interim plans and restrictive practice deadlines all fall early, yet every quarter gets the same share.
Uneven periods are allowed: you can ask for a bigger first funding period at the planning meeting, which beats a plan review later.
Intervention shouldn't wait: setting changes and team coaching can start while the assessment is still running.
On this page
Why is my behaviour support funding only released quarterly?
Because the NDIS now sets funding periods on plans, and three months is the usual length. Funding periods came in with changes to the NDIS Act in October 2024, and new or reassessed plans have used them since 19 May 2025. A period can be one, three, six or 12 months, set by the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA).
Three months is the default for capacity building supports, the part of a plan that funds building skills rather than day-to-day help.
Funding periods change when the money becomes available, not how much of it there is. We've written up how NDIS funding periods work separately, so this article stays on what they mean for behaviour support.
For a support you use at a steady rate all year, splitting the budget into quarters barely registers. Behaviour support isn't typically used at a steady rate: most of the hours go early, for a clinical reason and a regulatory one.
Clinically, nothing worth writing can be written until someone has spent real time watching, asking and working out what's going on. What follows is often lighter: checking whether the strategies are working, adjusting them, bringing new support workers up to speed. The same plan takes a fraction of the hours in month nine that it took in month one.
The regulation pushes the same way. A regulated restrictive practice is anything that limits someone's rights or freedom of movement, and it has to be reported to the NDIS Commission. Where one is in use, an interim behaviour support plan is due within a month of engaging a provider and the comprehensive plan within six, so both deadlines fall in the first two quarters.
The quarter that needs the most hours gets the same share as the quarters that need the least.
What does 15 hours of behaviour support in a quarter cover?
Less than most people expect. Funded behaviour support hours are clinical hours: meeting the person the plan is for, watching how things go in more than one place, and talking with everyone who's there day to day. You, the support workers, the teacher or the day program staff. Then making sense of it, and then the plan itself.
We don't bill for the administrative side of starting a service, so consent forms and service agreements don't come out of your funding.
Annual allocation | Per quarter | What that realistically covers |
30 hours | 7 | Depending on complexity, may barely cover getting started |
60 hours | 15 | Workable for one setting. Tight across three settings and a team of eight |
120 hours | 30 | Room to assess, write the interim plan and start coaching the team |
The squeeze is worst when the allocation was set before the NDIS understood how complex things were, which is common with a first plan. Our guide to NDIS positive behaviour support covers what the work involves end to end.
Can I use next quarter's behaviour support funding early?
Generally no. Funding is released on its date, and claims beyond what's available in the current period get rejected outright rather than part-paid. What you can do is ask the NDIA to change the plan, which generally means a plan review on the grounds of a change of circumstances.
A plan review is a bigger step than it sounds. A review takes time, often more time than the quarter you're trying to fix. And it doesn't have to stop at the funding periods: by default the whole plan gets looked at, so funding you were perfectly happy with can move too.
Plenty of families decide against a plan review for that reason. Where the plan hasn't been developed yet, the easier fix by far is to ask for a bigger first period at the planning meeting.
Money in an NDIS plan moves forward, not backward. Anything you need this quarter that sits in a later period is, in practice, not available to you.
How do I ask for more behaviour support funding in the first funding period?
Ask at the planning meeting, before the plan is built. Funding periods don't have to be equal, and a plan can hold more in the first period than in the ones after it. There's no standard figure to ask for, because it depends on how complex the situation is.
As a rough floor, under 15-20 hours in a first period is hard to work with, and harder again where a restrictive practice is in use, because the interim plan has to be written inside those same hours.
The strongest argument for a bigger first period is a restrictive practice already in use, because it comes with a legal deadline attached and a deadline is concrete in a way that "we need more time" isn't.
Close behind it is complexity nobody has measured yet. If the level of involvement required is not yet clear, say so at the meeting: an underfunded first period means coming back mid-plan for a review, which costs the NDIA time as well as yours.
The general case is worth making on its own: behaviour support is heavy on assessment at the start, so an even split funds the cheapest and most expensive quarters at the same rate.
Three people can make this case, and it holds up best when more than one does. You can raise it yourself. A support coordinator usually attends and knows how to word it. And a short written note from an involved practitioner carries the most weight, because it's evidenced with clinical reasoning behind it.
After the plan is in place, changing the allocation means a plan review, with the delay and the whole-of-plan risk that carries. Ask anyway when the case is strong, but don't leave it to afterwards when you could settle it at the planning meeting.
What should the first quarter of behaviour support be spent on?
The first quarter should produce at least one change you can use before the quarter ends. Changes to the setting, and to what happens in the lead-up to a hard moment, are the usual place to find it. Neither needs a finished assessment behind it.
If two visits show the same pattern around a transition, a practitioner can alter something about it in week two and watch what happens. Sometimes the answer isn't to change the person. It's to change the room, or how much warning comes first.
The other early move is coaching the people who are already there. A support team is with someone for the full quarter and the practitioner may have 15 hours, so time put into that team keeps working after the practitioner has left. Coaching is the highest-return decision in a first quarter, and the one most often held back until the plan is finalised.
An interim behaviour support plan puts safeguards and first strategies in place while the full assessment is still going. Writing one takes several hours, so a quarter with restrictive practices in it has less room for intervention than one without, not more. Plan for that at the start rather than discovering it later. The document will exist either way: it can sit in the file as a compliance exercise, or the support team can already be working from it.
Does starting intervention early mean a weaker assessment?
No, and in my experience it usually produces a better one. Changing one thing and watching what happens is assessment: you form an idea about what a behaviour is doing for someone, alter something, and watch. That beats another hour of interview, because interviews tell you what people believe and a trial tells you what the behaviour responds to.
Early intervention doesn't replace a structured functional behaviour assessment, the formal process of working out what a behaviour achieves for someone, and I'd be wary of any practitioner who suggested it did. Direct observation and record review still have to happen properly, running alongside the early work rather than in front of it.
There's a genuine exception. Where behaviour is dangerous and the risk of getting it wrong is high, the safe call is to slow down and understand it first. A mostly-assessment first quarter is sometimes the right clinical decision, just not the default for everyone.
What happens to behaviour support hours you don't use in a quarter?
Unspent behaviour support funding rolls into the next funding period of the same plan automatically, and you don't need to request it. Rollover only works within the plan you're in, so anything unspent when the plan ends doesn't carry into the next one. Funding also only rolls within the same support component.
Underspending the first quarter delays the work rather than losing the money. Low use across a whole plan is also hard to push back on at reassessment: the file shows a support nobody drew on.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long is an NDIS funding period?
An NDIS funding period can be one, three, six or 12 months, set by the NDIA according to the support type and the person's circumstances. Three months is the default in new and reassessed plans, including capacity building supports like behaviour support.
How many hours of behaviour support does an NDIS plan usually include?
Behaviour support allocations vary with need, and in our practice most people have 30 to 120 hours funded across a year. Divided into quarterly funding periods, that's roughly seven to 30 hours in any three-month window.
What is an interim behaviour support plan and when is it due?
An interim behaviour support plan puts safeguards and initial strategies in place while the full assessment is still underway. Where a regulated restrictive practice is in use, a specialist behaviour support provider must develop one within one month of engagement, and the comprehensive plan within six months.
Can NDIS funding periods be changed once a plan has started?
Funding periods can be changed after a plan has started, but it generally means asking the NDIA to review the plan on the grounds of a change of circumstances. That review can extend to the whole plan, so other funding may change too. Asking at the planning meeting is far more straightforward.
Does behaviour support have to wait until the assessment is finished?
Behaviour support doesn't have to wait for a completed assessment before anything changes. Adjustments to the setting, and coaching for the support team, can begin once early visits show a consistent pattern, and the results feed back into the assessment itself. A structured functional behaviour assessment is still completed properly alongside that work.
Sources
Rules for specialist behaviour support providers and NDIS behaviour support practitioners, NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission
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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