Children’s Therapy Services (CTS)

What do we do?

CTS provide therapeutic intervention and capacity building supports to children aged 0-10 years and their families. We service families through the NDIS, Department of Education’s Continuity of Support program and also provide capacity building supports to educators through the School Readiness Funding (SRF) program. We are committed to best practice within the early childhood intervention space and deliver our services through the Key Worker model by using a Transdisciplinary Practice (TDP) approach and for more complex cases, a Team Around the Child (TAC) approach. We are passionate about providing a welcoming and safe environment for our children and families to thrive and learn, and have adopted family-centered and strengths based practices.

What is the Key Worker model?

Instead of a family attending multiple appointments with several different therapists and professionals, a main therapist (Key Worker) is assigned from a discipline that closely relates with a child and family’s main prioritised goals.

The Key Worker model is considered best practice within early childhood intervention and has been shown to provide the most positive and effective outcomes for children and families.

The Key Worker focuses on working with significant persons in the child’s life (i.e. parents, carers, siblings and teachers), imparting information, knowledge and skills to them by coaching and consultation in conjunction with providing therapy to the child. Key Workers are upskilled in all areas of early childhood development and can help more holistically with a child’s goals. The key benefits are:

• A child builds a greater relationship with and becomes familiar with one main therapist – this has been shown to have a positive effect on a child’s engagement and confidence in sessions
• A child and family feels less overwhelmed with the number of appointments and people
• A specialist discipline can be brought in to consult on a more complex goal without the carer having to explain themselves all over again, the Key Worker can provide this background and context to the consultant before they walk through the door – allowing for more effective and targeted intervention
• Streamlining of therapy coordination – as Key Workers’ are in the loop about the entirety of a child’s care and intervention plan, it is easier for them to efficiently follow up on strategies/updates then if information and skills was divided amongst several therapists

An important aspect of the model is that it focusses on the child’s natural learning environments using the child’s daily routines and activities to promote the child’s development and participation rather than working with the child solely in a clinical setting.

Within the Key Worker model, we use the TDP and TAC approaches to ensure the support we provide families meets their needs and individual goals.

• Transdisciplinary Practice (TDP) – Our primary model of care where a Key Worker focusses on developing a strong relationship with families and is upskilled to deliver a range of intervention strategies with support and consultation from relevant disciplines.
• Team Around the Child (TAC) – A more time and resource intensive approach adopted where children and families have more complex needs (often medical) and require specialist support and intervention from a number of practitioners.