Page 5318 - Week 12 - Thursday, 28 October 2010
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who have a disability to be very important. This is reflected in the significant resources Therapy ACT allocates to achieve this objective.
Currently, Therapy ACT delivers a suite of services at a number of levels, including targeting the individual needs of individual students with a disability, working with teachers to support the needs of the general classroom and working with teachers to ensure that the whole school environment is conducive to supporting children with a disability. The flexibility built into Therapy ACT models of service for school-age children allows for teachers to access Therapy ACT support.
Therapy ACT also recognises that different families have differing resources to access therapy services. For some families, it is a lot easier to have services provided as part of a school curriculum. The diversity of service models used by Therapy ACT reflects this and, by working with schools to support particular students who are at risk of disadvantage, Therapy ACT aims to address issues around accessibility for ACT families.
DET and Therapy ACT have been meeting throughout 2010 to develop a service partnership agreement. This has facilitated discussions focusing on supporting teachers in special education settings, including early intervention playgroups, preschools, special education units and children with a disability in mainstream settings. An outcome of this agreement has been the establishment of a professional development working group, which includes membership not only from Therapy ACT and DET but also from the Catholic Education Office.
This group has met to discuss the professional learning needs of teachers and learning support staff, particularly those supporting students with a disability, to plan a calendar of workshops and conferences delivered by therapists from Therapy ACT throughout 2011. Some of the workshops will be collaboratively planned and delivered by Therapy ACT and DET to enable comprehensive content which aims to embed the therapy content into the school curriculum.
Management staff from Therapy ACT’s early childhood and school-age teams meet regularly with the executive staff at Black Mountain high, Cranleigh and Malkara schools and, as Therapy ACT has considerable involvement in these schools, regular meetings help address planning, innovations and problem solving.
Therapy ACT is able to support teachers of students with a disability in many ways. Professional learning opportunities for teachers are available both through a comprehensive calendar of events available to all ACT teachers and, additionally, through individual service requests initiated by individual educational settings. Workshops include award-winning programs such as Occupational Therapy’s write on program and workshops in areas such as speech pathology, physiotherapy and psychology. Other topics include supporting children with a disability, communication impairment, sensory processing difficulties and autism spectrum disorders.
Speech pathology resource packs have been developed for teachers to help support children with speech and language impairments. To assist schools to initiate referrals
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