WHY WE’RE HERE

We believe that Therapies for Kids will be a place for children to find Friends, Family, Fun, Fitness, Function & the Future. In everything we do, we work hard to live up to our three core values: pioneering, world-class and collaborative.

Core Values:

• Respect and understanding of clients and families
• Provide fun and playful therapy environments
• Instill confidence in children
• Advocate for positive change

We believe that every child should be provided with intervention as early and intensively as possible.

HOW WE WORK

Therapies for Kids is a trans-disciplinary practice which involves our team of experienced therapists and our families and clients working together to address the needs of the child and their family. Through collaboration, consensus building, regular open communication, and expanding of roles across discipline boundaries, team members plan and provide integrated services for clients and families. In a transdisciplinary team the roles are not fixed, there is recognition and acknowledgement of common areas of practice and blurring of boundaries. There is however a clear understanding about the individual professional contributions. The transdisciplinary model is not intended to replace any of the disciplines, but to enhance the service to the child and family by ensuring that the child’s intervention is holistic.

Benefits of the Transdisciplinary Approach:

• Clients and families are always members of the team
• Free flowing communication
• Transfer of skills and knowledge across discipline boundaries and role release
• Client goals are focal
• Specialists remain recognised and imperative to the provision of successful intervention

Family-centred practice is a trans-disciplinary philosophy of care and service delivery that views the family as a unit, incorporating parents/carers, the child and siblings as “the client” and attends to the skills and resources needed by all the family members to manage the ongoing care of the child with difficulties.

Family-Professional collaboration is essential to optimise outcomes of children with disabilities and their families and at Therapies for Kids we achieve this via treatment at most times with family and carers present, constant discussion of therapy to share knowledge and skills, review and joint development of therapy goals as per the Goal Attainment Scale which assists to direct the provision of therapy and evaluate its success, and development of a home program that is functional and can be adapted into daily life.

Our understanding of the functional and family issues is achieved in partnership with the family and as a result of the evaluation process. Results from external testing, interviews and other evaluations are all considered by our therapists, discussed with the family and ultimately utilised to generate a plan.

Coaching and counselling is integrated into our philosophy of working with children and their family. Therapy is as much a journey for the Parents and family as it is for the patient. The concept of coaching and counselling recognises the integral part the family has in the successful outcome and how Therapies for Kids also supports the family on this journey.

As professionals on your family’s team, we help you to identify strategies and courses of action that lead to skill attainment, sustainable behaviour changes and improvements in quality of life based on what they want to achieve or what works for their individual situation.

Educational planning, support and advocacy are part of the overall picture of success for our children. Often the educational system (which is designed to meet federal laws) and the medical system (which is designed to diagnose and treat disease), become a source of confusion and frustration for children and their families. We work hard to translate the options from both perspectives and address the individual needs of every child.

Two words (or more!) of advice for parents on developing a working relationship with their child’s therapist :

• “We feel that the best working relationships develop when there is a team approach. Parents need to be willing to communicate their needs as well as listen to what the therapist has to say and vice versa.”

• “Patience is necessary. Therapists are developing a rapport with your child and they are going to be pushing them to do things that are challenging so while it can and will be fun there may be times that your child may get upset since they are being asked to do things that are hard.”

The Goal Attainment Scale is a method of developing clear family centred goals that evaluate the outcomes of intervention for a specific child (measuring change in the performance of a child) ensuring relevance of the intervention as well as Therapies for Kids as a whole service. Our therapists use the Goal Attainment Scale to assist structure and evaluate our therapy goals and intervention. GAS goals are developed with each of our families within the first few treatment session.