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Policies

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View our Key Policies

Click on the link to read the following policies:

At Coastal Kids Speech Pathology, we are committed to respecting your rights and providing the best possible service for you. Your rights include:

  • You are safe
  • You are treated with respect
  • You can be part of your cultural community
  • You can participate in your religion
  • You can express your sexuality
  • You can communicate in your family’s language
  • You can make complaints
  • You can make your own decisions
  • You can say you want to go to another provider

You are the expert on you/your child. You can tell us what you want and when you want it. You can tell us what type of worker you want.  You can tell us how you want things done. We will always do our best to work with you meet your needs and follow your instructions. We will talk with you if we aren’t able to follow your instructions or meet your needs so you can make an informed decision about the supports you are accessing.

We commit to treating you and your family members with respect. You and your family/friends agree to treat us and our employees with respect as well. We reserve the right to refuse admission or ask you to leave our premises or for our team members to leave the appointment location (e.g. your home / somewhere in the community) if you or anyone attending appointments with you behaves in a way that is likely to cause damage, nuisance, offence or injury. Abusive, aggressive or threatening behaviour including damage to property or belongings may be reported to the police.

Responsibilities

To ensure you get the best outcomes from therapy and achieve your goals, you can expect the following from your therapist:

  • We will plan for each session.
  • We will start and finish each session on time
  • We will Provide information and education on treatment solutions.
  • We will provide written homework at the end of each session where appropriate.
  • We will liaise with other stakeholders as required and if consent is provided.
  • We will answer questions honestly and if the answer is unknown, try and find out through other sources.
  • We will conduct research regularly to ensure best practice is always used. We will engage in regular professional development and clinical supervision to ensure best practice is always used.
  • We will adapt sessions and therapy plan to suit your needs as required.
  • We will complete written reports within four weeks of being asked.

To ensure you get the best outcomes from therapy and achieve your goals, your support team and you will need to:

  • Arrive on time and prepared for each session.
  • Ensure you have the support you need to actively participate during sessions
  • Complete homework provided by your therapist.
  • Advise your therapist of any changes that may impact on your ability to achieve
  • your goals (i.e. change of other professionals involved, health or family changes).
  • Provide your therapist with information that is relevant to your abilities and progression as honestly as possible.
  • Abide by the cancellation policy if you are unable to attend a session. You will make all reasonable attempts to reschedule the appointment to ensure you do not miss out on therapy.
  • Provide your therapist with at least two weeks notice if a report is required.
  • Provide your therapist or the Coastal Kids Speech Pathology Director, Melanie von Bertouch, with any feedback, compliments and complaints as required and in a timely fashion to ensure Coastal Kids Speech Pathology can provide a
    high-quality service that meets your needs.
  • Take responsibility for the safety and wellbeing of yourself and any other persons in your care whilst Coastal Kids Speech Pathology is providing services.

Providing quality treatment. In order to fully assess, diagnose and treat you/a person under your care, we need to collect some personal information from you. If you do not provide relevant personal or health information, in part or in full, to Coastal Kids Allied Health it may result in an incomplete assessment. This may impact on the diagnosis and the following therapy that is provided. This information will also be used for the administrative purposes of running the practice such as billing you or through an insurer or compensation agency. Information will be used within the practice for handover when another speech pathologist will be providing you/your child with ongoing assistance.

We store information like:

  • Your name, address and phone number
  • People who you are close to (e.g. your family and friends)
  • Details about why and how we are helping you

This helps us to support you, and to check the quality of our services. We use your information so we can work with you to design supports that suit you.

We only share your information if you say ‘Yes’ or if there is a situation that makes us for your protection. We only share your information:

  • With a trusted person
  • When we need to so you can be safe
  • With your permission to provide required information to NDIS or other government organisations

When asked to share your information, you can say ‘No’.

We are responsible for keeping your information safe so only those you agree to can see it. Information at Coastal Kids Allied Health is stored securely, and only Coastal Kids Allied Health employees have access to it. Coastal Kids Allied Health takes all reasonable steps to ensure that information collected about you/a person in your care is accurate, complete and up to date.

You have several rights with your information:

  • The right to see a copy of the information we hold about you.
  • The right to have inaccurate or incomplete information corrected by us.
  • The right to object to any information you think is inaccurate.

If you want to see your information, please ask us.

To achieve the best possible outcomes for you it is essential that you attend appointments as discussed with your therapist. Please ensure you arrive on time to ensure you receive maximal benefit. If you are late to the appointment, full fees will still apply, and we will conclude the appointment as per the booking time.

We understand you may need to cancel or reschedule appointments due to unforeseen circumstances. We will do our best to organise a make-up appointment for you, however it may not always be possible to reschedule to a time that suits both yourself and your therapist.

Cancellations need to be made 24 hours before your appointment and you will not be charged. Late cancellations are any cancellations received with less than 24 hours notice. Late cancellations are charged at the full session fee. If you can’t make your session, we may be able to offer a make up appointment, or be able to complete a report or make some resources in your appointment time instead.

Please note, most funding sources do not cover late cancelled or non-attended appointments. This is especially true for Medicare and Private Health funds. In this instance, you will be required to pay for the full cancellation fee privately. If you receive NDIS funding, late cancelled or non-attended appointments can be claimed from your NDIS plan.

If late cancellations or non-attended appointments become a regular occurrence, we may discuss this with you and offer an alternative therapy time or other ways to support your attendance. Less than 70% attendance across a school term may result in a loss of your appointment time.

Please be mindful of spreading infections/diseases within our clinic or to our therapists. We work with children and adults who have complex medical needs and impaired immune systems who could have serious complications from a common cold. Please ensure you take all reasonable measures to stop the spread of infections and cancel appointments if required.

Coastal Kids Allied Health reserves the right to not start a session or end a session early if you or anyone who attends with you is visibly unwell. When this occurs, the cancellation policy may still apply.

You can request to change or end services with Coastal Kids Allied Health at any time. This must be discussed with Coastal Kids Allied Health to ensure all documentation, reporting and invoices are finalised. In the event that this is not discussed with us, we will attempt to contact you three (3) times over a three-month period before closing your file.

Please note, once you discontinue services with us, you will be required to go through the new client process again if you wish to re-engage our services.

Coastal Kids Allied Health requires payment on the day of the appointment or within seven (7) days of the invoice being sent out. Sessions will be paused/ceased once you have two outstanding invoices. If after a period of time the invoice is still outstanding, Coastal Kids Allied Health reserves the right to engage their preferred Debt Recovery agency to assist with recovering the outstanding amount.

If you are experiencing financial hardship and are unable to pay your invoice in full, please contact us so we can discuss alternative payment arrangements.

Have we done something you are really happy with? Is there something we can do better? Have we let you down?

Here is how you can let us know:

Come and Talk to Us 

Come and chat to us about how we can improve our service. If we are not doing something well, we would love the chance to do better. You can contact us and let us know your feedback by any of the following methods:

  • Speak to your speech pathologist
  • Speak to our Clinic Support Officer in person at the clinic
  • Call us on 0427 922 378
  • Email with the details of your feedback
  • Drop an anonymous feedback form into the box in the clinic

Have we Fixed Things? 

Let us know how we are doing. It can be hard to hear that we aren’t doing as well as we would like — we really want to offer you the best service possible. If you have asked us to make a change, it would help us to know that we have fixed the problem. You can do this by using any of the above methods listed.

Are we still getting it wrong? 

You have other options. If you wish to take your complaint further, you can do so by contacting the NDIS Commission on 1800 035 544 or online at www.ndiscommission.gov.au. Please let us know if you need some support to do this.

Referral Forms

To complete our referral forms, please complete form linked below.

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