Speech Pathology Australia - Allied Health Assistant Feature

in focus

Megan Ingram Director of Peninsula Speech Plus

Megan Ingram is Director of Peninsula Speech Plus in Victoria, a private practice with clients right across the lifespan. The practice includes 20 speech pathologist, 10 occupational therapists, a teacher of the deaf and four AHA’s. The NDIS rollout has led

“AHAs are not for everyone. We’ve had a couple of false starts. As I said, it’s taken us a little bit of time to try things out and modify. “The practice offers three packages for AHAs and the packages are structured around frequency. We have a high frequency option which is twice a week, and we have a once-a-week option and a fortnightly option as well. “Initial meetings with the AHA, the family and the clinician are organised. There is a midpoint touch point and a final session. We’ve structured it to be term-based because that’s how most of our interventions work. “Once a family has been working with the clinician for a few sessions, and we know them well, we may work through whether an AHA might be an option. “We organise an initial meeting to set goals and write the plan. We do that collaboratively and then the AHA would carry out those sessions. The AHA has access to our practice management system so that the notes are there, and they can see everything. The clinician and AHA can track progress if there is ongoing intervention with the therapist as well. “Everybody involved, including the AHA is involved right from the beginning, right up to the point where the plan is sorted and worked out, and then the AHA is given a little bit of autonomy to execute the plan." How do you go about recruiting and managing AHAs? “We employ our AHAs in house and they are involved in all of our professional development. They participate in all our weekly meetings. They are part of the team. “Something we have definitely found is that what makes the program work well is having good templates and strong communication. “Education is definitely important as well. Education of AHAs can vary and be a little bit different depending on where the AHA is coming from. When we initially rolled the program out, we had third and fourth year allied health students. They stepped into the role easily, with prior knowledge they were able to get started with our families. But they graduate and move on, and we need to start again. What we do now is we have mixture of certificate three and four and under-graduate students as well. “Apart from the education in their coursework they also need to be educated around how we do things, so we have specific training around that. “Our AHAs work with individual clients, and also work within the clinic with us so they’re involved in our group program. This enables them to have ongoing education and support. “It is our intention to have an AHA lead in our practice. It’s not a position that is recruited for yet, but it is our intention.

to significant growth in the practice and the challenges of the pandemic meant that the practice has evolved to predominantly service NDIS participants. Megan shares her experiences with working with AHAs, highlighting communication and integrating AHAs as fully fledged team members as key to their program’s success. Tell us how you started working with AHAs and your overall experience “Our experience with AHAs began a few years ago where we started to host students during placements from Open college and our local TAFE. “Hosting students on placement was beneficial to the business as it was a way to test and review our policies and procedures, provide clients with extra sessions with the student AHA and develop new resources and projects. We have had a few false starts in establishing a consistent AHA presence within the team and it really has been through the NDIS and the available funding stream that got the program ‘up and running'. “What we really love about working with a AHAs is the move to a more social model of delivering services. We can focus closely on functional change. This is important. “AHAs have been a great complement to the therapy program because they can spend time with our clients out in the community. “That is how we have approached our AHA strategy. Assessing AHA sessions have meant that clients have been able to engage in more sessions, more meaningful practice. It’s also been great to provide families with different service delivery models. Some families attend intensive sessions (in holidays) with clinicians before working with an AHA during term time. We have other families who have reduced the frequency of clinician sessions and have increased AHA sessions. What we like is that we are providing options for families to tailor their support to suit their goals and situation." How do you incorporate AHAs into the client plan? “When people first come in, we break their family goals down into achievable steps and discuss how they want to achieve this goal. What they want it to look like and what’s going to suit them. It all begins with the client’s goal.

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June 2021 | Speak Out