Collaboration with Allied Health Providers
Allied health providers, including speech pathologists, occupational therapists, physiotherapists and psychologists, can support students with disability to achieve their learning goals. Working together, allied health providers and school staff can support each other to improve student outcomes.
What do we mean by collaboration?
Collaboration is when schools and allied health providers work together to improve how our students can be supported to achieve their educational goals. It involves sharing information, skills, expertise and strategies to support student learning.
Effective collaboration involves school staff and providers developing a common understanding of the supports that each student needs. It can occur whether or not the allied health provision is happening in school.
The benefits of collaborating with allied health providers
Students with disability or additional learning and support needs benefit when schools and allied health providers work together in the planning and delivery of support.
School staff and allied health workers benefit from the sharing of specialist knowledge and expertise in meeting individual student learning needs.
Schools and allied health providers can work together to enhance a family's engagement in their child's learning. This might include support to embed classroom learning strategies into the home setting, or to reinforce in the classroom allied health strategies adopted at home.
Collaboration resources
Tips for school - provider collaboration (PDF 163KB)
This guidance document provides schools with tips for effective collaboration, in the areas of defining the parameters of collaboration, communication, documenting collaboration arrangements, and monitoring and evaluation.
Collaboration arrangements can be documented as part of the relevant agreement the school has with an allied health provider. For example:
- as part of the Schedule to the External Provider Information Agreement (Word 74KB) for allied health services organised by parents/carers and delivered at the school
- a number of collaboration resources have been developed as part of the Specialist Allied Health Scheme, including a briefing template (Word 37KB), order form (Word 121KB) and kick off agreement. (Word 35KB)
Collaboration case study – Yandelora School (PDF 358KB)