Page 3376 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 17 August 2011
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other services and that this provides them with services in a learning environment and provides learning achievements for pupils.
Through this program, therapy assistants will be able to sit with small groups of children and do skills. At the same time, teachers are able to see these activities working within the context of their classrooms and get ideas how they might be able to incorporate them into their normal day.
DR BOURKE: A supplementary.
MR SPEAKER: Dr Bourke, a supplementary question.
DR BOURKE: Minister, how will this project be evaluated?
MS BURCH: I thank Dr Bourke for his interest in therapy assistance. It is quite an exciting program, and I am very pleased that it is being implemented over the next 12 months. The project has a number of methods that will be used to evaluate its effectiveness. The throughput of children receiving therapy will be recorded, as well as any variations in numbers throughout the year. Each therapy assistant will support 20 children at any time. The number of hours of therapy provided will be recorded, with the aim of ensuring that 70 per cent of the therapy assistant’s hours is involved in direct face-to-face service delivery. The remaining time will be used to complete necessary documentation of casework and to develop resources.
Each individual student will be assessed prior to the commencement of therapy, using a standardised measure to create a detailed individual therapy program. The therapy assistants will then implement the program. At the end of the intervention each child’s progress will be assessed using a standardised tool. This will be used to provide an objective measure of the gains made.
In mainstream classes, the health professionals will work with teachers to implement whole-class programs using a checklist to identify students that would benefit from individual and group programs. This will include such areas as handwriting, gross motor skills and language skills. Teachers will also be given a pre-implementation and post-implementation survey to assess the effectiveness of the strategies incorporated into their curriculum.
The families of the children receiving therapy and the teachers of those children will also be surveyed to assess their satisfaction with the program. A reference group comprising parents, school principals, senior professionals, the Catholic Education Office and the ACT government has been formed to provide advice on and input into the project.
Finally, this is an exciting program. At Gowrie school yesterday, the students and the teachers were very involved and very positive about the project.
MR HARGREAVES: A supplementary, Mr Speaker.
MR SPEAKER: Yes, Mr Hargreaves.
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