Specific tools within a much bigger Practice
The FREE 2B ME Practice is broader than any one framework or tool. These resources help practitioners and people examine particular parts of practice - such as access, interpretation, body and sensory considerations, conditions, reflection and decision-making. They are not interchangeable, and none of them represents the whole FREE 2B ME Practice.
Each resource has its own purpose, evidence basis, development status, intended users and scope boundaries.
These resources do not automatically constitute clinical, diagnostic, functional-capacity or NDIS assessments. Each resource identifies its intended use, evidence basis, development status and limitations. Author-developed tools are identified as such.
Inside the Practice, not above it
The FREE 2B ME Practice is the whole: person authority, professional reasoning, useful capability, communication, relationships, support, health and body considerations, environment, evidence, review and systems. Everything below does a specific job inside it.
Sovereignty Conditions Audit
A reflective conditions tool.
Ledgers and reflection tools
Ways of making hidden burden, fit, access and patterns more visible.
Practice process
Notice → Separate → Locate → Make Accessible → Choose Direction → Support & Implement → Review → Recalibrate.
Access matters before interpretation
Access can materially affect what a person is able to communicate, demonstrate, understand, participate in or use in a particular situation. That is why FREE 2B ME treats access as something to examine before making strong conclusions about unwillingness, skill, capacity, behaviour or intervention need. Access is not the absence of challenge.
Access Before Intervention
Before interpreting difficulty as resistance, incapacity, unwillingness or behaviour requiring change, consider whether the person can meaningfully access what is being asked - communication, information, relationship, sensory or physical access, timing, pace, modality and support.
Access Before Intervention does not mean intervention never occurs. Once access is sufficiently addressed, teaching, treatment, skill development, challenge or other intervention may still be appropriate where it serves the person’s goals and is justified within scope.
Four Access Levers
REDUCE · PROTECT · RESTORE · ADD. A practical way of considering what might change around access in a particular situation. The levers are one tool for thinking about access, not the whole implementation model of FREE 2B ME.
Authority and self-determination
The person’s knowledge, preferences, goals and authority remain foundational throughout the Practice. Professional expertise, evidence, support and systems can add something useful without becoming the author of the person’s life. Sovereignty is an important principle within FREE 2B ME, not the organising structure of every framework and tool.
Four pairs, two positions
The Practice Library explores related territory from two positions: the person living the experience, and the practitioner or system responsible for good practice. The books are not translations of frameworks. They are fuller works that connect lived experience, practice, evidence, support and systems.
Hidden effort, access, support and authorship
FREE 2B ME: Less fixing. More living. ↔ Access Before Intervention
Behaviour, communication and meaning
You Make Sense ↔ Behaviour Makes Sense
Body and access
Nervous System Nourishment ↔ Beyond Regulation
Person, practice and systems
Built With You ↔ Practice That Holds
Reflection and mapping tools
Sovereignty Conditions Audit
An author-developed reflection tool for examining conditions that may affect access, choice, voice, understanding, safety and partnership. It is not a diagnostic assessment, a capacity measure, or a complete model of the FREE 2B ME Practice.
The Ledger family
A developing set of tools for making hidden burden, effort, access barriers and uneven demands more visible. Individual tools are released only once their intended use, evidence basis and limitations are settled.
A framework is not automatically a service
FREE 2B ME frameworks may inform thinking across different contexts, but using an idea or tool does not turn an interaction into counselling, Specialist Behaviour Support, therapy or another professional service. Professional services remain subject to individual assessment, practitioner qualifications, professional scope, consent, evidence requirements and relevant regulation.
How practitioners learn to use the tools
FREE 2B ME Practitioners do not become competent simply by reading a framework. The Practitioner Pathway connects learning with supervised application, self-application, observation, feedback and capability evidence.
Learning complete ≠ capability demonstrated ≠ participant-specific readiness ≠ Work Authority.
What it is, and is not
Nervous System Nourishment is an author-developed body-and-access framework for exploring sensory, movement, rest, communication, relational, environmental and practical factors that may influence access, comfort, participation and wellbeing. It does not assume that one nervous-system state explains a person’s experience, and it does not make calm the goal. It may sit alongside counselling, Specialist Behaviour Support, medical care or allied-health work where relevant. It does not replace them.
It is currently being critically refined through supervised postgraduate work and wider professional review. It is not: a calming protocol; a treatment for Autism or ADHD; compulsory interoception or body awareness; forced mindfulness or breathwork; a trauma-release treatment; a substitute for counselling, Specialist Behaviour Support, medical care or allied-health care; or a validated standalone treatment. Its components draw on existing areas of practice and evidence, but the combined framework should not be mistaken for an independently validated clinical intervention.
Built to be questioned
FREE 2B ME does not treat author-developed language as evidence simply because it has a name. Tools and frameworks are reviewed against research, professional standards, lived experience, implementation evidence and what happens in real practice. Development status and limitations should remain visible.