Aboriginal Children's Therapy Team

Our ACTSW are the first point of contact for families referred to our service. They assist the speech pathologists, occupational therapists and psychologists/social workers. They advocate for clients and families, liase with other services, offer support during those therapy sessions, and help families link into other services like hearing and other community organisations. Under the direction of our clinicians, they support with screening groups and programs as well as completing individual programs.

Our occupational therapists can help children with:

Meeting Early Development:

• Babies and toddlers that have difficulty with tasks such as rolling, using their hands, crawling and walking.

Fine Motor:

• Drawing, colouring, cutting and holding a pencil.

Gross Motor:

• Throwing, catching, kicking a ball, hopping, balancing, skipping, co-ordination and core strength.

School:

• Handwriting, concentration and sport.

Self Care:

• Toileting, dressing, buttons, brushing teeth, tying shoelaces and eating (e.g. fussy eating, using knife and fork)

Play and social skills:

• Playing by themselves, pretend play and playing with other children.

Sensory processing:

• The ability to respond to and make sense of noise, sight, touch, movement and gravity.

Our psychologists/Social workers can help children with:

• A range of emotional and behaviour concerns that kids may have such as social and play skills, anxiety, sleep, emotional regulation and poor self- esteem.
• Parenting support and education.
• Individual counselling

They might do this by;

• Working with parents to help them learn new parenting skills
• Working with children and their families on activities that will help build strong relationships with each other
• Individual therapy through play to support children’s emotional development.

Our speech pathologists can help children with:

Talking:

• Using enough words for their age.
• Using enough information in sentences/stories.
• Using correct sentences.

Understanding:

• Understanding concepts e.g.big/little, in/on etc
• Understanding instructions at home, daycare or school.

Stuttering:

• Speaking smoothly, for example not repeating sounds (e.g. “d,d,d”) or words (e.g. “dog, dog, dog”)

Voice:

• Using a clear voice rather than hoarse or nasal sounding voice.

Eating and drinking:

• Sucking, chewing and swallowing.

Other:

• Using language appropriately in social situations.
• Pre- reading skills e.g. sound-letter awareness.