When you give us a call, you will get the opportunity to discuss your concerns and ask questions with our friendly reception team. Gaining a deeper understanding of your child will allow us to match you with the therapist that is most suited to work with you and your family.
We make every effort to allow your child the time to become comfortable within the therapy room. Your child will have a variety of toys ready to play with on arrival. The therapist will ask you a series of questions to get to know your child better. These questions will relate to your child’s difficulties and how these are impacting on their ability to participate in everyday life. We will get to know more about your family and your individual lifestyle so that we can really understand your concerns and develop strategies that meet your specific needs.
At times, our assessment is based on informal observations and discussion with you and your child, however where appropriate, we will use an assessment kit specifically designed to assist with determining the level of difficulty and any underlying barriers that may be getting in the way of your child developing particular skills.
We understand that you just want to jump straight into therapy and may prefer not to have an assessment, however doing a thorough assessment allows us to understand your child’s needs and underlying barriers to achieving skills, and develop a plan that will reduce the time required for attending therapy. Missing this important step means that your child will potentially spend longer in therapy as we may not be targeting specific areas of need.
Within the first appointment or soon after, the therapist will discuss the areas that are contributing to your child’s difficulties, based on the assessment results. Together you will set goals that are meaningful and important to you and your child’s situation. This will be a combination of the therapist’s expert knowledge in child development and the priorities for you and your family.
Once the first goals have been established, we determine the best way of working together to achieve those goals in the fastest time. We will develop a plan that considers your lifestyle and family demands to ensure that you are not overwhelmed and stay on track to reaching those goals. This plan will be known as your ‘Management Plan’ and will be referred to throughout your therapy.
The frequency of therapy sessions is tailored to your child specifically. Some children require weekly or fortnightly sessions whereas some children only require monitoring on a less frequent basis. This will be discussed with your therapist. Each session begins with a quick review of progress since the previous session.
With this feedback from you, we are able to get started with engaging your child in the therapeutic activities. We will guide you through each activity so that you fully understand why that activity is being used and show you ways to practise at home with everyday items.
Throughout the session, you are encouraged to ask questions and be as involved as possible. The more you practise with the therapist, the more comfortable you will be at completing the activities at home between therapy sessions.
Your therapist will provide you with suggested activities or strategies to implement at home between therapy sessions. We will work with you to find the best way to gain additional practice at home with the least interruption to your lifestyle. The home practice is a vital aspect of your child reaching his/her goals and requires a commitment from you and your family.
Management plans are reviewed every three months to ensure that therapy is on track and progress is being made in the shortest time frame. At your review appointment, changes will be made to existing goals or new goals will be established.
Our reports are not generic or computer generated. A one page complimentary report is provided to you at the completion of an initial assessment. When you request a more in-depth report from your therapist, we dedicate a minimum of one hour to write the report so that it is specific to your child. Each report is written with a clear purpose so as to give recommendations to a class teacher or to provide results to a specialist. Each report can be written by a single therapist or multiple therapists (such as for children seeing multiple therapists who require an NDIS progress report). Reports are charged at an hourly rate, depending on the length of time required to write the report.
