School-led multidisciplinary responses
- Schools directly engage professional specialisations such as physiotherapy, speech pathology and occupational therapy to meet the health, wellbeing and/or learning needs of individual students or a cohort of students
- The school budget is used to purchase these services in most instances.
- Builds additional school capacity to meet identified needs utilising Allied Health services and other professionals.
- Capacity to use school funding creatively to employ additional staff and/or services to meet the school’s unique contextual needs to support the development of the whole child
- Can be a flexible approach that is responsive to the changing needs of students.
- Continuity of support can become an issue if dependent on external availability and school budget
- Implementation of this approach in smaller school settings, or where school funding is limited, may not be possible
- Schools require support to embed evaluation practices.
- The department has established a prequalification Specialist Allied Health and Behaviour Support Provider scheme to support schools that may need to engage specialist Allied Health services to ensure learning adjustments are appropriate and effective for students
- Allied Health services included within the prequalified scheme are: Occupational Therapy; Speech Pathology; Physiotherapy, Exercise Physiology & Behaviour Support
- Some schools also engage other professional specialisation such as Music and Art Therapists that are not captured in the Allied Health and Behaviour Support Provider scheme
- Some schools have partnered with foundations, not-for profit or corporate organisations to develop School Kitchen Gardens and/or sensory gardens.
- Engage with the Student Wellbeing external programs catalogue which provides an online register of externally produced programs, available either free of charge or to purchase.