Telehealth video physio | Melbourne VIC

Babies and children do best in their own environments.

Telehealth physiotherapy at your home

Telehealth we are all in this together.p

We worked exclusively by telehealth over the extended Melbourne lockdowns, and have been thrilled by how well it has gone!

We've had all our families from babies to teenagers achieving their goals in 2020. We are always working on land based goals, whether through land or aquatic based physiotherapy, so we are excited to have been able to continue to support the Splash families through the pandemic.

Many of our current Splash families have been so pleased with the outcomes that they have chosen to continue using telehealth in combination with face to face services.

We offer telehealth physiotherapy to play towards your goals at home,

and keep learning when we can't see you face to face

Splash have always been flexible and innovative in providing services in the settings you need them most. Teleheatlh allows us to continue to support families even when we can't see you face to face.

Our telehealth physiotherapy sessions work similarly to land physiotherapy.

We support newborns through to adolescents with:

musculoskeletal, neurological, developmental or postural queries
diagnosed developmental delay, disability or illness.

Splash Physiotherapy is passionate about:

using family centred practice
employing a play based approach
basing our practise upon strengths based philosophy
combining contemporary Neuro Developmental Treatment (NDT/ Bobath) with motor learning and sensory integration approaches to paediatric physiotherapy
working towards participation goals

We focus upon coordinating care with each family’s education and health service providers to meet your needs, as well as assisting integration into community based services.

We focus on helping your child participate in their day to day functional activities:

moving around, getting dressed, sitting steady at their school desk, playing at lunchtime,

joining in sport and going along for family walks and bike rides.

Babies

We have a special interest in working with babies born pre-term, in helping them with:

self regulation
developing movement patterns
protecting their head shape
helping parents with ideas for play to help their children learn to move
formal assessments of their development are available

We help with queries around typical development, head shape, torticollis and asymmetrical movement patterns.

We also see babies who have specific diagnoses, to start early intervention nice and early.

Children and young people

We help with queries about:

stages of development
movement patterns
musculoskeletal
posture
coordination
challenges in learning new skills
developing higher level mobility skills (such as running, hopping, ball skills, agility skills for sports)
inclusion and participation at school, sport and leisure activities
formal assessments to track development, and advocate for funding
persistent pain
chronic fatigue syndrome
POTS (Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome)

We support your child's whole development

by coordinating with your therapy and education team

to promote communication, social, play, fine motor, problem solving and self care skills in our sessions

Childcare, kinder and school support

We are still able to support your education transitions and inclusion through telehealth. We can use video calls to:

collaborate with your family and educators to develop goals and strategies for inclusion
observe your child in their education setting
advise on strategies to support inclusion and capacity building in classroom and playground activities
advice on activities to help your child move towards their developmental goals
make recommendations for assistive technology to support learning
develop reports to support funding applications for inclusion support

Assistive technology helps us be independent

Assistive technology / equipment

Through our sessions we may identify the need for assistive technology (AT) items.

AT suppliers are an 'essential service' and are operating for trials during pandemic restrictions.

We have been using telehealth to call in to the trial sessions to collaborate with the AT professional, child and family as usual to work through the pros and cons of different items, to see what suits your needs best.

We complete the AT funding applications in our office after gathering the required information through assessments.

See more: assistive technology

Working with your team & funding bodies

Teamwork doesn't stop!

We collaborate with your family, allied health professionals (eg. speech pathology, occupational therapy, psychology), medical team, educators and funding bodies.

This helps us to develop goals and plans together, to support your child's development across all skill areas, and support their participation in everyday life.

We also work with your funding body to advocate for the services you need. Most of our families have NDIS plans however we are familiar with the variety of funding options available.

See more:

Aquatic physiotherapy at home?

We have been supporting aquatic physio goals during telehealth as well!

Where this is important for the family, it fits with the child's goals, and there is the opportunity and appropriate risk management, we have been supporting aquatic physio goals at home.

Babies:

Parents and babies have worn bathers for a bath with a telehealth consult to learn strategies they can implement in bath time, just like we usually do in the pool.

Children:

Some children have goals around tolerating water over their face and head, learning breath control, and transitions between positions. We have been supporting strategies for this practise at bath time.

Home pools:

Some families do have home swimming pools they wish to use. There are additional risk management factors that need to be considered, but if you are interested in our support we are happy to consider this option with you.

Is telehealth here to stay?

Telehealth is a valued Splash physiotherapy service.

We will continue to offer telehealth as part of our services.

Background:

We have supported a few families via telehealth due to difficulty in accessing services.

We had started planning for a trial of telehealth over terms 2 and 3 2020. Many families miss multiple sessions over winter as we have always had strict cancellation policies with any symptoms of infectious illness. This is because we work with babies, children and families who can be hospitalised with a bug that ay have only caused a runny nose in another person. We were wanting to see if telehealth would reduce the winter cancellation rate, and if that would lead to improved goal achievements.

During the January 2020 bushfires, we had to flexibly choose different locations and ways of providing physiotherapy services due to the smoke and poor air quality. Where we would usually have been outside, we looked at alternative venues and goal areas. We didn't have our telehealth processes ready yet, but thought they would be helpful in these situations.

Then in February 2020 as the pandemic ramped up, we fast tracked our telehealth preparation in case it was needed. Our Splash families were supportive of our move to telehealth. We were extremely proud of how our team and Splash families took to the new mode of delivering our services, and continued to achieve goals over the first lock down.

When services began reopening, some families chose to continue with telehealth as they were risk averse, and had been happy with their goal achievement.

We were able to briefly reopen to face to face sessions in between lockdowns before again returning to telehealth full time from July.

Future:

We envisage telehealth continuing to be a vital component of our services. When restrictions ease, we will use a graded approach to returning to face to face. Even in our 'new normal', telehealth is likely to be preferred by families for many services.

We will continue to use telehealth where face to face sessions have to be cancelled due to:

illness in a Splash family or physio, where we are well enough to do the session but respect the need to avoid spreading infection
weather or facilities being unsafe or unavailable