Behaviour Support Plans Teens Help Write | PBS Practice Notes #03
Why I'm building a way for young people to help write their own behaviour support plan, through drawing, story and animation, and why it's still v0.1.
I keep seeing the same problem. Plans that are too clinical, built about the young person and not with them.
You can usually tell from the first page. The young person is described in words they’d never use for themselves. The goals belong to the adults. And the one person the plan is meant to help has never seen it, or wouldn’t recognise it if they did.
In my own work, I’ve always had to get young people to buy in. Nothing sticks without that. And I keep noticing how creative kids are. They draw, they invent characters, they build whole worlds in games and stories. That’s the part of them most plans leave out. I want to build on it.
Involving young people in their behaviour support plan
I call it “the young person as author”. Every young person gets two plans.
The adults get the usual behaviour support plan: the assessment, what the behaviour is doing for the young person, the strategies, the data. That’s the engine, and it doesn’t change.
The young person co-authors their own version. It’s a short illustrated book, in their words and their drawings, turned into a simple animation. It covers the same ground as the adult plan, told their way.
It works in two moves.
Draw it. Part of getting to know the young person happens on paper. What does a good day look like? What does the hard feeling look like, and what would you call it? What helps? Those drawings sit in the “about me” part of the plan, so the young person’s view is right there on page one.
Tell it. Together we turn the drawings into a story. It follows the shape of a social story: what happens, how people feel, and what the main character can do next. The young person picks the characters, the style and the words. Then the drawings get animated, so the story moves. No filming, and no photos of the young person. Ever.
Why drawing and story
The young people I most want to reach are the ones who’ve tuned out of talking-based support. Ask them how they feel and you get a shrug. Hand them a pen and ask them to draw the storm in their head, and give it a name, and the conversation can start somewhere else entirely.
That fits how positive behaviour support already works: start with what the behaviour is telling you. It’s also the idea behind externalising, from narrative practice (Michael White and David Epston). The problem becomes something outside the person: “the Volcano” or “the Storm”, drawn and named by the young person. It’s easier to talk about something you can point at.
What the evidence says, and what it doesn’t
I want to be straight about this part.
Social stories, developed by Carol Gray, are widely used, and there’s a modest evidence base when they’re written properly and paired with other strategies. Comic strip conversations, also from Gray, use drawing to work through what happened and what could happen next.
Externalising is a stance and a tool. As a therapy on its own, its evidence is thin. I’m using it for the stance: the young person is the expert on their own life.
I haven’t tested this combination in practice yet. So I’m not calling it a proven intervention, and I’m not claiming it works. It’s v0.1. I’m testing the idea.
The three tests it has to pass
Before I call any of this mine, it has to pass three tests:
- Does it make the plan easier for the people around the young person to use?
- Does the young person choose to do it?
- Does the data move?
If it fails any of them, I change it or drop it.
What it isn’t
It isn’t a therapy, a new brand of PBS, or a shortcut around the functional behaviour assessment. The function-based plan still does the work. This is about how the plan reaches a teenager who’d rather draw than talk. It’s part of how I approach behaviour support for young people in Western Sydney.
The NDIS Commission’s 2026 plan quality snapshot found 83% of plans now show the person was consulted. That’s real progress. Being asked is a start. I want young people helping to write it.
Next issue
Issue 04 is about health before function: why I check for pain, sleep and other health issues before I write a single line about what a behaviour is for.
PBS Practice Notes is written by Yos, a positive behaviour support practitioner working with young people aged 12 to 20 in Western Sydney, South West Sydney and the Illawarra. Nobody I support appears in these notes. Examples are composites, and I label them.
Frequently asked questions
Can a young person help write their own behaviour support plan?
Yes. A young person can help shape the parts that are about them: what a good day looks like, what’s hard, what helps. In this approach they co-author their own illustrated version of the plan, while the adults use the full plan.
Does this replace the behaviour support plan?
No. The adults still get a full, function-based behaviour support plan. The young person’s version sits alongside it.
Do you film or photograph young people?
No. The young person’s version uses their own drawings, turned into a simple animation. There’s no filming and no photos of young people.
Do social stories work for teenagers?
They can. Social stories, developed by Carol Gray, are widely used and have a modest evidence base when they’re written properly and paired with other strategies. In this approach, the teenager helps write the story, in their own words and style.
Is this approach proven?
Not yet. It draws on tools with some evidence behind them, like social stories, but I haven’t tested this combination in practice yet. It’s version 0.1.
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