BUSHkids 2016-17 Annual Report

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BUSHkids Children’s Allied Health Service teams provide individual and group Allied Health assessment, intervention, support and advice for children aged 0 – 10 years and their families, as well as targeted programs and health education sessions. Children’s Allied Health Services

Overview At print deadline, 1,462 children accessed services from across BUSHkids Service Centres, schools, kindergartens, long-daycare centres or community centres. A total of 7,486 sessions was completed during the 2016-17 financial year. Over this time, staff from the service centres have worked closely with community stakeholders and referring agents to ensure services are targeted to meet the needs of communities, with specific attention to vulnerable and at-risk families of immediate and outlying communities. The work undertaken reflects the flexibility and variety of services provided to families from our centres. Community engagement examples are many – from participating in Council meetings, community network meetings, interagency meetings to events specific to local communities, such as the ‘Early Years Network’ and Friends of BUSHkids meetings as well as many more less formal gatherings. Our Allied Health teams generally comprise a Family Health Support Worker (FHSW), Occupational Therapist (OT), Psychologist and Speech-Language Pathologist (SLP) – the precise composition varying according to both needs (for example, a doubling of Allied Health disciplines – SLP in particular) as well as vacancies within the team in the local area. Supporting BUSHkids’ workforce Supporting a workforce’s professional development needs in remote and regional service centres is a significant resource to provide; nonetheless this is seen as essential in developing clinical expertise and competency and is key to providing a high quality and efficient service with demonstrable outcomes for families and communities. It is a priority of BUSHkids to ensure services are evidence-based and responsive to needs in the communities and, moreover, are aligned with the key performance indicators tabled in funding service agreements. The initiatives BUSHkids has undertaken in the past year to overcome the challenges of distance have included: Launch of ‘Lunchbox Learning Series’ professional development sessions provided by videoconference covering topics such as: • Psychoeducation – understanding ADHD • Communication strategies (key word signing, Blanks level of understanding) • Sensory vs behaviour

BUSHkids Children’s Allied Health Services Centre Bundaberg Queensland Health Dalby Queensland Health Warwick Queensland Health Emerald

These sessions have been facilitated by internal and external presenters, with a strong focus on utilising internal skills and expertise within the organisation. Staff who attend external professional development activities have been invited to share with teams across Queensland – for example, Dalby OT Katherine West completed Professor Karen Stagnitti’s Developing Pretend Play Skills in Children training and later presented a Lunchbox Learning session to her BUSHkids colleagues. Further initiatives • Regular supervision sessions for all staff from an experienced clinician within their discipline • Monthly discipline-specific meetings conducted via videoconference for peer support/mentoring • BUSHkids’ Annual 2017 Conference – participating in sessions with both discipline-specific and multidisciplinary focus. Staff have also accessed external professional activities over this period with focus on provision of targeted programs and early intervention approaches: for example: 1-2-3 Magic® and Emotion Coaching for parents, Triple P, Circle of Security,® Read and Grow, Fun Friends social skills program, Lidcombe program. All staff are currently completing the training for the BUSHkids–developed ‘A Steady Start to School Program’ to facilitate the sessions in educational settings targeting parents of children entering prep with a number of sessions already booked for several schools in the final term of 2017. In general Experienced Allied Health staff have facilitated a number of clinical placement/observational opportunities for undergraduate students from the University of Central Queensland, James Cook University and the University of Southern Queensland. These placements not only support the learning and clinical skill development of undergraduate students but are also a beneficial learning experience for staff providing the clinical supervision. Disciplines covered include speech-language therapy, occupational therapy and psychology.

Partial funding

Department of Education and Training: Non-State Special Needs Organisations Program Department of Education and Training: Non-State Special Needs Organisations Program Department of Social Services: Communities for Children Funding

Mount Isa

• Learn to Play • Mindfulness • The Common Approach • Responding to Domestic Violence.

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