A change for the better
17 March 2022
If COVID has taught us anything over the last two years, it has been that we can all adapt to doing things a little bit differently, often for the better.
Right across Northern Adelaide Local Health Network (NALHN), many of our services have been going online to meet the challenges of COVID restrictions, like the Allied Health team from NALHN’s Children’s and Families’ Service, who have been providing phone and video telehealth consults to local families for more than a year now.
“COVID has forced us to be more adaptable in the way we can continue to deliver our services to the community,” said Arryn Mills, Senior Manager for NALHN’s Children’s and Families’ Service.
“We have quickly learned that telehealth consults provide a new and complementary medium for engaging with families, whereby barriers like travel costs, time, caring for siblings, and preparing children for appointments who may have sensory differences, are reduced,” said Arryn.
Speech
Pathologist, Shannon prepares for her next telehealth consult at GP Plus Super
Clinic, Gilles Plains.
Allied health professionals within the service have found it so effective, and feedback from families so positive, that telehealth consults are now an integral part of the service’s model of care.
Face-to-face consults give therapists the opportunity to trial new strategies and activities, while telehealth consults allow them to review progress and address any challenges with parents/carers in between visits.
Making these changes to the way we deliver our Children’s and Families’ Services also means NALHN can provide greater access, even to families who don’t have internet access, with iPads available to borrow when needed.
“Of course, relying on digital services and technology has its challenges. Sometimes there are connectivity issues, and often children are not as engaged as they would be during a face-to-face visit, but we are all getting better and better at overcoming these issues,” said Speech Pathologist, Shannon Clift.
“In fact, because we see children and their families in their own environments and in their own homes, we get some very helpful insights and see behaviours that we might not see in the clinic.”
NALHN Children’s and Families’ Service is an early intervention service that provides developmental assessment, therapy, education and relational support to young children and their family/carers. The service uses a family-centred, holistic and evidence-based approach to maximize the child’s developmental outcomes and increase the capacity of the family unit to support their child’s development.