How Collaboration with NDIS Allied Health Providers Improves Participant Outcomes
At Bright Wellness, we are always open to learning and improving our support methods to ensure the best outcomes for our participants.
I believe that one of the most effective ways to do this is through collaboration with participants’ support circles, particularly allied health professionals such as Occupational Therapists, Physiotherapists and Exercise Physiologists.
At the heart of supporting our participants is a person-centred support style with a focus on NDIS goals outcomes.
Through years of working with participants with various support needs, I have learnt the skill of adapting my support skills to best suit the individual. For example:
What body language to hold when approaching a client that is heightened
What tone of voice to use while communicating to help persuade someone
What energy and vibrancy to embody in order elicit the most participation possible
But in some cases, support needs are complex. And I have no shame in admitting that despite my experiences, some participants challenge me in a way that sometimes I need to ask to help.
This is where I have found great value in collaborating with Allied Health Professionals.
Case Study: Working with Reeve
Reeve is one of my youngest participants I support. He is a sweet, young boy with a care-free nature. He enjoys playing and has a mischievous side which gets him giggling at times.
My role in supporting Reeve is to try and use gross motor activities to regulate his mind and body, while also building some ability with sports-related movements and skills. My hope in improving the latter is that he can build off these foundations to allow him to participate in more meaning movement activities. A breakthrough we have had in recent months is developing the ability to consistently catch and throw a ball…go Reeve!
Overall, progress is generally quite slow and some weeks are challenging. While usually very patient, I started to feel a sense of impatience in our sessions; like I could be doing more for Reeve, but I wasn’t pushing the right buttons to get him to ‘buy in’. This led me to reach out to his parents to see if they had any other supports that I could talk to, to see if they had any ideas or tips for me.
They linked me in with Reeve’s NDIS speech therapist who kindly offered me 15 minutes of her time over the phone to chat. I found this conversation reassuring as we were able to share our shared struggles - nice to know it was nothing personal!.
More importantly, the tips I took away from that call have been invaluable ever since. I have now started to put a stronger emphasis on the sensory component of our sessions. We use bubbles, sensory slime and fidget toys as reward mechanism between doing productive exercise and as also a way to downregulate if he gets overstimulated during the activities.
Case Study: Working with Micki
Micki had been dealing with persisting issues with her shoulders. As she is a woman that lives in a wheelchair, and also has capacity to do independent self-transfers, keeping her shoulders healthy and functional is integral to her quality of life.
Micki was fearful that without any improvements in her shoulder, surgery could be on the horizon. Thankfully, Micki refused to go down the surgery route and found herself a specialised physiotherapist for shoulder rehabilitation. Micki was given a recovery plan, using resistance training as the primary method of rehab.
Using her NDIS Core Funding, Micki booked in 2 weekly sessions with Bright Wellness to help her follow her physiotherapy recovery plan effectively. Additionally, we were able to provide some gentle stretching and massage to help relieve muscle tension before and after her exercises.
Having a Bright Wellness personal trainer come into her home acted as a form of accountability for Micki too. Whenever she had a session with us, we ensured she did her exercises with impeccable form.
We have acted as a bridge of support for Micki, as regularly revisiting the physiotherapist was not always feasible to her NDIS plan or her work schedule.
I am happy to report that after 9 months of consistent application, Micki has experienced significant improvements in her shoulder pain, is able to move with more freedom and has maintained her functional capacity.
Let’s Collaborate
If you are a NDIS Allied Health provider, or a service coordinator that has relationships with local NDIS Allied Health providers, we would love to get connected to see if we can help your NDIS participants achieve their goals.
