Child Development Team

The Child Development Team provides integrated child health intervention that assists the development of children and supports families where there is a concern about a child’s development.

A stepped health care approach is used to provide service for families in a timely way to support the child’s development and wellbeing whilst addressing vulnerabilities and the family goals.

The care provided is timely, goal focused, integrated with other services, suitable for the needs of each child, effective, prioritised for children with indication of the most vulnerability.

Our multidisciplinary team incorporates:

• Speech Pathology
• Occupational therapy
• Dietetics

Families have the most important role in helping a child learn many behaviour and social skills. Our trained professionals work closely with you to help give your child opportunities to reach their potential.

We can support children to develop the following skills:

• Increase a child’s spoken vocabulary.
• Produce age expected sounds so clarity of speech is achieved.
• Understanding instructions.
• Creating sentences & stories using appropriate grammar.
• Eating a range of healthy food.
• Reducing the drama and conflict at mealtimes.
• Playing (sharing, turn taking, role-play).
• Fine motor skills (cutting, drawing, writing).
• Gross Motor skills (jumping, running, climbing, throwing).
• Processing sensory information (textures, movement, touch, noise).

We offer a range of services including Parent Talks, Group and Individual Therapy.

Our service is embedded with collocated family support services, child dentistry, early childhood education, counselling services, and Maternal Child Health Nursing Services.

Individual Therapy: Individual therapy is offered in blocks of 6-8 sessions with the option to increase the number of sessions for families from vulnerable backgrounds. This decision is based on clinician judgement. Sessions are up to 45 minutes long and are available to families on a weekly or fortnightly basis. This is determined by discussion with the family and availability. Teletherapy services are also available at the family’s request.

Home Programming: This service is available for children that would benefit from working on their speech, language or motor concerns in the home environment. Parents are provided with an instruction session to explain the home program and are able to contact their clinician whilst they are completing it for further guidance. A review will be offered at the completion of the home program. Additionally, children who are receiving therapy for stuttering difficulties will receive ongoing individual sessions until they meet the criteria to reduce the frequency of sessions in accordance with the Lidcombe Program as is best practice.

Parent Information Talks and Group Therapy: Parent Information Talks and Group Therapy occur to complement individual therapy or be in place of individual therapy in accordance with criteria for service. They have been designed to streamline children into service pathways in a manner that reduces planning time required by clinicians and increases the timeliness of service.

Group therapy typically occurs for 6 sessions however this can alter and is detailed in the program plans. The Program Plans include information relating to the services, this includes outline and eligibility criteria. At the completion of a Parent Information Talk the planned service for the child through CDT has either been completed or the child is recommended to attend further service via Group Therapy or Individual Therapy. At the completion of Group Therapy, the child will be reviewed to confirm that they have completed their planned service with CDT.