Occupational Therapy and Speech Therapy services can be provided in a variety of locations, although Kid Sense has chosen to provide clinic based services only.
Review the following chart to understand why Kid Sense believes that clinic based services are the ‘best fit’ for many clients seeking a quality service.
| SHOULD I CHOOSE CLINIC OR MOBILE BASED THERAPY FOR MY CHILD? | ||
|---|---|---|
| CLINIC | HOME, PRESCHOOL OR SCHOOL | |
| COST | Often less expensive. | Often more expensive due to travel costs. |
| DURATION | Cheaper service costs affords therapy for longer and more frequently as needed. | More expensive costs often reduce the duration and frequency of therapy affordability. |
| APPOINTMENT FLEXIBILITY | Easier to get convenient appointments due to greater staff availability. | Often limited appointment flexibility due to travelling staffing schedules. |
| APPOINTMENT ACCESSIBILITY | Appointment can be accessed as needed, not just on a pre-arranged weekly schedule. | Appointments only available at limited times in the mobile therapy schedule. |
| APPOINTMENT RESCHEDULING | ‘Make up’ appointments can easily be accommodated following illness. | ‘Make up’ appointments can be difficult to schedule following illness due to travelling schedule. |
| Holiday Appointments | Available and encouraged to maximize preschool or school readiness for the coming year or term. | Not usually available. |
| APPOINTMENT TIME USE | Parents can ensure full access to the therapy appointment time by arriving on time and toileting the child in advance. | Mobile therapy staff often spend session time trying to locate the child, walk them to the treatment space and toileting them if necessary. Sometimes children are reluctant to accompany the therapist in front of their peers. |
| TREATMENT SPACE | Treatment occurs in an individual and specially tailored treatment space allowing best attention to task, access to ideal therapy equipment and confidentiality. | Treatment most often occurs ‘in the line of sight’ of others, in public spaces (e.g. school corridor) thus compromising attention to task, equipment that can be used and confidentiality of intervention. |
| TREATMENT RESOURCES | All therapy resources available at all times. | Often limited resources brought for each session for ease of travel. |
| THERAPIST-CHILD MATCH | Multiple staff on site at the same time offers more opportunity to make a personality or clinical needs fit, or to offer therapist change if the child becomes ‘bored’ or ‘too familiar’ with the treating therapist. | Limited options to select therapist by personality or skill set, or to change therapist if the child becomes ‘bored’ or ‘too familiar’ with the treating therapist. |
| CHILD PARTICIPATION | Children are often more ‘on their best behaviour’ out of home so the therapist can get greater child engagement in the therapy tasks. | Children are often more comfortable at home sometimes making it harder to get and keep their attention to the therapy tasks. |
| PARENT PARTICIPATION | Parents actively attend to see what is done, how and why allowing repetition at home for faster progress. Written home program suggestions are provided to the parent after each appointment to support faster therapy progress. | Parents often don’t attend and get scant feedback about the session’s activities or activities to do at home. Thus home practice can be difficult to conduct effectively if at all, slowing therapeutic progress. Information provided to the chid to give their parents can be lost by the child. |
| THERAPY TEAM | Multi-disciplinary staff on site at the same time for ease of scheduling back-to-back appointments if desired. | Parents need to schedule different appointment times for different mobile professionals. |
| ADMINISTRATIVE TEAM | Admin. staff are on-site and accessible daily to rapidly assist with scheduling, billing queries etc. | Admin. staff, if involved, are not readily available to solve problems, adjust scheduling etc. |
| THERAPIST-TEACHER DISCUSSION | Admin staff schedule therapist-teacher phone appointments at dedicated time to allow undivided attention to the discussion. | Teachers are often not available for discussion when mobile therapy staff are on-site so a scheduled phone appointment is required. Or teachers try to give therapists their divided attention while still managing the class, thus compromising the duration and depth of discussion possible. |
| THERAPY TEAM DISCUSSION | Professional discussion is easier and more frequent when both staff are on site or have easily access to booking phone appointment with other offsite therapists. | Professional discussion is more difficult where staff are not at the same site, or don’t have admin staff to help facilitate phone discussion. |
*It is assumed that both clinic and mobile therapy services are billed at the pro-rata NDIA rates in the above information.
