OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY

The KCC Occupational Therapy Team began in the Western Suburbs of Melbourne in 2014. Since then, we have been providing service and support to our clients and their families to facilitate the development of their child’s independence skills. As Occupational Therapists, our aim is to work with children to help them perform and participate in their daily occupations or activities across the areas of self-care, productivity, and leisure. Our focus is to promote independence and improve our client’s capacity to fully engage in their daily activities. Our Occupational Therapists are passionate about using a family-centred and strengths-based approach when working with children and their families to support them in reaching their full potential.

Through collaborative efforts and partnerships with parents and caregivers, our goal is to equip children with the skills they need to navigate life confidently. Our evidence-based interventions are tailored to each child's unique strengths and challenges.

As Occupational Therapists, we can support our clients to develop their skills in the following areas:

Fine Motor Skills

Fine motor skills involve the coordination of small muscles, particularly those in the hands and fingers. These skills are crucial for tasks that require precision and control, such as writing, buttoning a shirt, or using utensils. Our Occupational Therapists can assess key components of fine motor skills such as hand eye coordination, finger dexterity, hand strength and endurance, and provide specific recommendations to guide the development of these skills.

Our paediatric occupational therapy team is here to assess and address any concerns relating to your child's fine motor skills. Through personalised interventions and family collaboration, we aim to enhance your child's abilities and foster independence.

Gross Motor Skills

Gross motor skills involve the coordinated movement of large muscle groups, controlling actions like crawling, running, and jumping. These skills are fundamental for physical activities and play, a crucial role in a child's overall development. Our team will assist in assessing key components such as core strength, balance, coordination and spatial awareness.

Our paediatric occupational therapy team is here to assess and address any concerns relating to your child's gross motor skills. We can create fun and dynamic intervention in collaboration with families to enhance your child's physical capabilities and confidence.

Self-Care Skills

Self-care skills encompass the abilities required for daily activities that promote personal hygiene, health, and overall well-being. These skills contribute to a child's growing independence and are essential for their overall development. This includes activities such as:

1. Personal Hygiene (for example washing hands, brushing teeth, and bathing)
2. Dressing and Undressing
3. Feeding Skills (for example the ability to feed oneself, use utensils, and drink from a cup)
4. Toileting
5. Sleep

Our paediatric occupational therapy team is here to assess and address any concerns related to your child's self-care skills. Through personalised interventions and parent coaching, our goal is to enhance your child's independence in self-care activities.

Play Skills

Play skills encompass a wide range of activities that contribute to a child's physical, cognitive, social, and emotional development. It involves engaging in activities that are enjoyable, spontaneous, and purposeful, promoting overall well-being. Our team will assist in assessing key components such as imagination and creativity, social Interaction and problem-solving.

Our paediatric occupational therapy team is here to assess, educate and address any concerns related to your child's play skills. Through evidence- based interventions and collaboration with families, we aim to enhance your child's play experiences and developmental milestones.

Sensory Processing

Sensory processing refers to how the nervous system receives and interprets information from the senses, integrating this input to produce an appropriate response. This process impacts how a child responds to their environment and how they engage in daily activities.

Some key aspects of sensory processing:

1. Sensory Input (involves information received through the senses: sight, sound, touch, taste, smell, and the sense of movement (vestibular) and body position (proprioception).
2. Sensory Modulation (the ability to regulate responses to sensory input, balancing reactions to various stimuli).

Sensory Processing can have an impact on daily functioning, emotional regulation and motor skill development. Our occupational therapy team specialise in assessing and addressing sensory processing challenges that your child may have. Through personalised interventions and collaboration with families, our goal is to help your child navigate the world with confidence.

Emotional Wellbeing

Emotional well-being refers to your child's ability to understand, express, and manage their emotions in a healthy and constructive manner. It involves fostering positive emotional experiences and equipping them with the skills required to navigate various feelings. We can assist with emotional awareness, expression and regulation. Our paediatric occupational therapy team is here to address emotional well-being concerns. Through evidence- based interventions and collaboration with the child’s support network, our goal is to help your child build resilience and emotional strength.

Executive Functioning

Executive functioning refers to a collective set of cognitive skills that help individuals manage time, pay attention, switch focus, plan, organize, remember details, and self-monitor. These skills are crucial for daily tasks and contribute to a child's academic and personal success. We can assist with strategies to support a child’s working memory, inhibitory control, cognitive flexibility and planning/ organisation skills.

Our paediatric occupational therapy team can assess and address executive functioning challenges. through fun and engaging interventions. By utilising the child’s interest and ensuring our focus is family-centred our goal is to empower your child with effective executive functioning skills to manage everyday situations

Community Safety and Awareness

Community Safety refers to one’s ability to access the environment in a safe and controlled manner. As Occupational Therapists we can work with our clients and their families to recognise safe practices and provide support to ensure our clients are able to implement these into real life scenarios. We can provide interventions that cover a variety of community safety skills including road crossing, stranger danger and access to community services.

Our team is here to assess and address community safety and awareness challenges through numerous interventions and collaboration with families. Our goal is to empower your child with the skills needed to navigate the community safely and responsibly.

SPEECH PATHOLOGY

The KCC Speech Pathology team began in the western suburbs of Melbourne in 2009, since then we have been passionate about supporting children's communication development. We extend our services to clinic-based sessions and offer support in school or kindergarten settings. As a team, we embrace a purposeful approach that infuses intention into every facet of our work, ensuring that every interaction, from our collaborative team discussions to our individual sessions with children, is driven by a specific and meaningful goal.

Our clinicians, who work with children experiencing diverse abilities, are deeply committed to making a meaningful impact in each child's life. This commitment motivates us to demonstrate our value through the provision of outcomes that are both tangible and measurable. We firmly believe in the need for results-driven intervention, recognising that every child's journey is unique. Our firsthand experience reinforces how purposeful engagement can genuinely enhance a child's progress.

At KCC, we specialise in the assessment and treatment of children with communication disorders, encompassing challenges in speaking, comprehension, reading, social interactions, fluency, and appropriate voice usage. We approach each child's unique communication needs with empathy, respect, and an unwavering commitment to their holistic development.

Assessment of Communication

Our assessment process for communication skills is a comprehensive and holistic approach, designed to understand and address a child's unique needs. We focus on various aspects of communication, including receptive and expressive language, sounds, fluency, pragmatic skills, auditory comprehension, and literacy skills. Here is an overview of our assessment process:

• Family Questionnaire: We begin by gathering essential information through a comprehensive family questionnaire, which helps us understand your child's background and unique circumstances.
• Service Agreement: We work with you to complete a service agreement, outlining the scope of services, goals, and expectations, ensuring transparency and alignment.
• Family Support Plan: Through building a family support plan, we delve deeper into your family's needs and explore how we can provide the most effective support.
• Child Assessment: Our experienced team conducts a thorough assessment of your child, considering their strengths, challenges, and developmental goals. This can be done through the completion of standardised assessments or informal observation.
• Outcome Explanation: After the assessment, we take the time to discuss the assessment results with you, providing a clear understanding of your child's progress and areas of focus.
• Goal Setting: Together, we work with your family to define and prioritise achievable goals that align with your child's unique development journey. This collaborative approach ensures that our services are tailored to your whole family’s needs.

Receptive Language Skills

Receptive language is a vital aspect of communication, encompassing a child's ability to understand spoken language. A qualified Speech Pathologist will assess receptive language through a combination of formal assessments and informal observations. These assessments help us to evaluate vocabulary comprehension, sentence structure, and the ability to follow spoken instructions. We consider the child's age and developmental stage as well as the family’s needs when developing and prioritising intervention goals.

Once we've identified a child's specific needs, we create interventions that are engaging and effective. We use a variety of toys, games, and everyday objects to build their understanding of concepts, instructions, and relationships. Our goal is to make learning enjoyable and relevant to the child's daily life. By targeting receptive language development in a neuroaffirmative and interactive way, we empower children to reach their communication goals and thrive on their unique developmental journey.

Expressive Language Skills

Expressive language is a key element of effective communication, encompassing a child's ability to convey thoughts, ideas, and emotions through spoken language. A qualified Speech Pathologist will assess expressive language using a blend of formal assessments and informal observations. This process involves comparing the child's expressive language skills to developmental norms to pinpoint their level of understanding and identify priority goals.

Our assessment approach combines standardised tests with keen observations to gain a comprehensive understanding of the child's expressive language abilities. These assessments help us evaluate vocabulary usage, sentence structure, and the child's ability to express their thoughts and needs effectively.

We then support the child in building their vocabulary, enhancing sentence structure, and honing their ability to express thoughts and ideas. We utilise a wide array of tools, including objects, pictures, games, and everyday items, to create a learning experience that is both enjoyable and practical.

Articulation

Articulation refers to the clear and precise pronunciation of speech sounds. Developing accurate articulation is essential because it directly impacts a child's ability to be understood and effectively communicate with others. A Speech Pathologist will evaluate a child's articulation of sounds through a combination of formal assessments and informal observations. We compare the child's articulation skills to established developmental norms, allowing us to determine their level of proficiency and identify areas that require attention. Following the assessment, we set achievable and measurable goals that are tailored to the child's unique articulation needs.

We employ a structured and hierarchical approach to intervention, targeting sounds of high importance and value to both the child and their family. This is done by incorporating engaging activities, games, and exercises to make therapy sessions enjoyable and interactive. Consistent practice and repetition are fundamental to articulation therapy. We provide the child with opportunities to practice the target sounds in various contexts to enhance their speech clarity.

We encourage parents and caregivers to support the child's progress by engaging in home practice activities. This reinforces the skills learned during therapy and promotes generalization into everyday communication. We continuously monitor the child's progress to ensure that they are meeting their articulation goals. Adjustments are made to the therapy plan as needed.

Phonological Awareness

Phonological awareness is a fundamental pre-literacy skill that encompasses the understanding and recognition of the sound structure of spoken language. This skill set is a crucial building block for early literacy development, and it plays a pivotal role in a child's ability to read and write. A Speech Pathologist will focus on assessing a child’s phonological awareness skills by assessing the child’s ability to identify and form rhyme, segmenting words, blending sounds, identifying beginning and ending phonemes.

By identifying a child's strengths and areas for improvement in phonological awareness, we can set specific and achievable goals to enhance these skills. Our intervention methods are designed to promote phonological awareness through engaging and interactive activities. We work with the child to build their phonological awareness skills by paying games and activities that strengthen their understanding of pre-literacy rules. Our goal is to empower children with strong phonological awareness skills, laying a solid foundation for their literacy development and lifelong learning.

Literacy

Literacy is the ability to read and write, and it forms the cornerstone of effective communication and lifelong learning. It also involves decoding the rules needed to understand, read, and spell words. Through assessment, we evaluate a child's proficiency in these fundamental literacy skills, identifying areas for growth.

Our approach is centred on developing achievable and measurable goals that are tailored to the child's unique needs. We work diligently to build their literacy skills by foster a deep understanding of language, phonics, and comprehension. Our interventions are designed to empower children to become confident and capable readers and writers, equipping them with essential skills for their educational journey.

Fluency

Fluency in communication is the ability to express thoughts, ideas, and emotions smoothly and effectively. It encompasses the ability to speak with clarity, rhythm, and coherence. A Speech Pathologist will assess and observing blocks, pauses and stutters in their conversational speech which includes assessing their speech rate, rhythm, and the absence of disruptions. Our goal is to develop achievable and measurable objectives to enhance a child's fluent speech, enabling them to communicate with confidence and effectiveness. We work collaboratively with the child to build the skills needed for clear and uninterrupted communication, fostering their ability to engage with the world and express themselves confidently.

Pragmatic Skills

Pragmatic skills are the social communication abilities that enable children to navigate interactions and relationships effectively. We recognize that these skills are vital for building meaningful connections and enhancing a child's social and emotional well-being. We take a neuroaffirming approach to guide children through situations that may trigger distress or anxiety. Our aim is to provide them with the tools to assert themselves, feel heard, and make genuine connections with the people around them. Through tailored interventions and support, we empower children to communicate confidently, understand social nuances, and foster authentic relationships, ultimately enriching their lives and fostering a sense of belonging in their community.

Psychology

The KCC Psychology team provides a wide range of psychological services and support to young people, their families, and carers across the Western Suburbs of Melbourne. We extend our services to clinic-based sessions, as well as providing support and liaising with schools and kindergartens. Collaboration with families, educators and allied health professions ensures that the child can be best supported in their home, education and community environments.

The KCC psychology team are passionate about improving the mental health and wellbeing of children with diverse needs and abilities. We believe that providing a holistic approach can work toward improving the quality of life of the children and their families. We pride ourselves on using evidence-based practice to address individualised goals. In addition to this, we approach each interaction with children, families and care teams with a warm, friendly and supportive approach to build positive relationships and provide a positive environment.

Individual Therapy

We provide child- centred therapy to children based on their individualised abilities and support needs. We work collaboratively with families, carers, educators, and allied-health therapists to set and work toward child-centred goals. Intervention strategies are evidence based, which ensures that all interventions are based on current research, and in line with best practice. We specialise in supporting children with an array of needs such as mental health and wellbeing, emotional regulation, social communication and relationships and executive functioning.

Mental Health and wellbeing:

Through guiding the young person to better understand and explore their emotions and experiences, we can support them to develop individualised strategies to reduce stress and anxiety in potentially triggering situations. We work with the individual and their family and caregivers to increase confidence and self-esteem, by providing positive and affirming home, social and learning environments. Using evidence-based practice, our intervention methods are designed to promote mental health and wellbeing through a holistic approach.

Emotinal Regulation:

The ability to understand our body and how it experiences and responds to emotions and environmental factors is imperative in being able to navigate the demands of daily life. Our intervention is aimed at supporting children and their caregivers to develop this understanding and using this information to develop and implement personalised strategies to better manage both internal and external demands.

Social Communication and Relationships:

Developing fundamental social and communication skills is imperative for navigating social interactions and building healthy relationships with peers and family. These skills are vital for building meaningful connection and thereby enhancing a child’s social and emotional wellbeing. We empower the child and their carers to understand individual needs, explore emotions within the self and others, and develop emotion regulation skills to reduce stress and anxiety in potentially triggering social situations.

Executive functioning:

Executive functioning encompasses a person’s ability to successfully navigate internal and environmental demands, problem solve, regulate, and manage impulses. Using evidence-based and child-centred practice, we support the child and caregivers to understand individual strengths and barriers for executive functioning. We apply a neuroaffirming approach to develop strategies and create an environment that is supportive of the child’s individual needs and abilities.

Parent/ Caregiver/ Family Support:

Behind every young person is a parent, caregiver or family support system that provides daily care and support. Therefore, a large aspect of psychological services at KCC is providing support and coaching for the child’s support system. This ensures that the support system feels confident and empowered to utilise skills and strategies to work collaboratively toward the child’s goals. We take a neuroaffirming approach to support families to better understand the child’s individual needs and abilities and use this information to develop personalised goals and strategies.

School Or kindergarten liaising:

At KCC we provide external visits to schools, childcares, and kindergartens to address the young person’s goals in their social and educational environments. This provides the opportunity to deliver intervention within these settings and support transition and generalisation of skills. It also allowed us to support educators and staff to work collaboratively with the families to achieve the child’s goals. This collaborative approach is aimed at empowering and upskilling educators to build an environment that fosters positive development and is supportive of the child’s individual needs and abilities.

Assessment

We provide both formal and informal assessments for the purpose of investigating diagnosis in line with the DSM-5, school funding applications, NDIS funding applications and general therapy goal setting. We offer assessments in the areas of

• Cognitive functioning
• Depression, anxiety, and stress
• Functional Behaviour

In addition to this, in collaboration with caregivers and allied health therapist, we work to develop a Family Support Plan. This allows us to explore further the family’s needs, and to provide a more effective and holistic approach to the child and family’s support.

Details pertaining both formal and informal assessments can be discussed with your treating therapist or upon referral. A referral for psychological services is not required by a GP or specialist, simply give us a call to make an appointment with our Psychology team. To gain insight into your child’s presentation and needs, the initial session will involve obtaining a detailed history and relevant information, meeting the child and their caregivers, rapport building and goal setting. This initial consultation is just as an imperative part of the service as the therapy sessions themselves.