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Episode Transcript

Hello and welcome to our very first episode of the Go Beyond Therapy podcast. I'm so excited to have you here. This has been a little project of mine for the last 12 months or so, and I'm so excited to have this now off the ground and for you to join me.

I'm Samantha Taylor, a Pediatric Occupational Therapist and Business Owner here at Go Beyond Therapy. I have been [00:02:00] an Occupational Therapist for the last 5 years, and have been involved in the disability sector for over 10 years now.  

Go Beyond Therapy is based in Heathmont, Victoria, so in Melbourne. And during our very first few years of being in business, we had to navigate the Melbourne COVID lockdowns, which as I'm sure a lot of our audience is now reflecting on was a very difficult time for us. 

So, as a business, as clinicians, and as families with children with additional needs and those who are neurodivergent, we had to basically work as a team. So that provided a very holistic, team based approach from very early days. As clinicians, we really learned the meaning of therapy in terms of how to prioritize goals and children's development.

And we had to navigate some of the most difficult time, I'm going to say [00:03:00] internationally, with children with additional needs and navigating challenges. 

Now, if we fast forward to today, we've supported over 350 children and provided over 33, 000 hours of support in the last five years. 

So these children have had a range of difficulties and diagnoses from autism to ADHD to intellectual disabilities to Down syndrome, chromosome deletions from global developmental delays to just handwriting difficulties. So for myself, we've had to navigate a lot of different types of goals, a lot of different types of ages.

The youngest we have supported recently has been 12 months, and the oldest that we've supported has been 17 turning 18 and looking at supporting them into transitioning into adulthood and [00:04:00] basically referring them on to more appropriate services who can help navigate that next chapter of life. So, through this podcast, I will be pulling on years of experience and years of experience with a range of different families and different children in the hope that I can help support you and your family and the children you work with in navigating these difficult times between school difficulties and department of education from NDIS changes we will go through this together . 

At Go Beyond Therapy, we offer a range of supports, including face to face, one on one traditional OT. We offer a range of groups where we support children in a supported environment and work towards common goals. 

We also support families with our therapy assistant program where we generalize the goals and the skills that we're working on in like occupational therapy sessions but to the general [00:05:00] context and the general environment of where the child is. So for example if we're working on self care goals we will usually upskill a therapy assistant to work on these at home as well.

We will also be offering a range of online supports and online modules and courses over the course of the year, but I will keep you updated as they come about in 2025. 

If you have any particular feedback or you'd like us to discuss a topic in particular, or see if we can get a special guest, let us know in our socials or through email or through our website and we'll do our best to discuss some of the topics that are coming up in the industry at the moment. I have a feeling that there'll be a lot of NDIS questions, which I'm sure our audience is having lots of headaches about like the families that I support at the moment.

So leave it with me and we'll do quite a few different episodes on how I support my families [00:06:00] navigating the challenges that come in the NDIS space at the moment and any particular topics that come up . 

So yes, I am super excited to have you here. Welcome to the Go Beyond Therapy podcast. And I look forward to helping and supporting you and your family or those who you support throughout 2025 and beyond.