BUSHkids Annual Report 2018-2019

CONVERSATIONS: MOUNT ISA New Sensory Garden supports therapy success Clinical: Philippa Brown Alison* was originally referred to us by her mother to help with her sensory processing skills, so initially she was seen by our Occupational Therapist. She had concerns about Alison’s language, so she was cross-referred to me as the Speech Pathologist. We saw her for multidisciplinary sessions targeting her emotional regulation and her underlying social skills. I also gave her mum some strategies to use at home to help her language skills. We worked with Alison for about four months in weekly sessions with both her and her mum, who has been very supportive and says she has seen real improvements in Alison’s social interactions with other children and adults. Mum was using a lot of the ‘social language’ – the informal language all of us use when talking with family and friends – that we were using in sessions through the “I see a winner” social language program. Alison’s mum said from using that and following up with those strategies at home she’s seen an improvement in Alison’s social skills and her ability to engage with others. A big moment came during one of our sessions when we were reading one of our ‘We Thinkers’ books on expected and unexpected behaviour. We talked about expected and unexpected things in social situations which might make us feel uncomfortable versus really comfortable. During the session, Alison actually started using some of the language herself and said “that makes me feel uncomfortable, and that’s a bit unexpected!” One of the things that has really helped Alison is the support from her family. Her mum has listened and taken on every strategy we covered in therapy sessions at home. She is implementing them every day and that’s where we see the biggest impact for children. The biggest results happen when parents are following-through with our recommendations and strategies and Alison’s mum was fantastic at implementing them. We’ve been working with Alison for four months but she’s a child who really needs ongoing support. We are hoping we will be able to get her NDIS funding at some point in the future so that she’ll be able to get that.

Parent: Selina* (Alison’s mum) “BUSHkids has helped our family a lot and Alison — who was four years-old when she was receiving therapy — has benefited so much from the support she’s received.We now know the behavioural things to say and techniques we can use to support her and help her speech develop. “The best thing about BUSHkids are those take-home techniques we learn as parents. Alison gets so much out of a session at BUSHkids, but she has to take those things away with her and practice them at home. She can only do that with our help and we still use the strategies she has learned in therapy sessions at home every day. “The therapists have been fantastic: I love them, and Alison sees them as friends. One of the great things is they took the time to understand us and our family, which helped us a lot. I would recommend them to anyone. If a parent says ‘my child’s doing this, or not doing that’ then I say call BUSHkids to see if they can help. “And it’s not just the therapists that make BUSHkids fantastic for families like ours, it’s everyone involved: it’s the volunteers and admin people as well. Sharon on reception is always so helpful, funny and caring.When we come to the Centre it’s like coming to see family. Janet, one of the volunteers, has been amazing and has done things at the Centre just to help Alison. “BUSHkids has made a great difference to our family and I can’t rate them highly enough.”

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The Centre’s new Sensory Garden, seen in a quiet moment before its official opening by Mount Isa Mayor Cr Joyce McCulloch and Deputy Mayor Cr Phil Barwick.

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