Building work on the teleBUSHkids Centre complete
In my June letter I updated you on the progress of our teleBUSHkids Centre and I’m delighted to announce that building work has now finished, and we are in the process of fitting out the new centre. We hope to have the centre fully operational early in the New Year.
Thanks to your help what was a traditional residential Queenslander, next door to our Toowong precinct, has been transformed into bespoke, purpose-built office space capable of simultaneously hosting multiple telepractice sessions. A new floor has been added where we can host guests and conduct meetings while the whole building has been designed to be accessible for people with a disability.
When fully operational the new centre will greatly improve our ability to support kids and families in regional, rural, and remote Queensland, enabling us to provide a full range of support and therapies not readily available through our regional service centres, and allowing children and families in remote locations who find it difficult to travel into one of our service centres to receive the support they need.
Telepractice is also a fun and engaging way for kids to receive support from our therapists. In this digital age children are very comfortable interacting with friends on their electronic devices. By using specialist telepractice tools, while kids are engaging in what they perceive as fun online games, our therapists are delivering the support they need to overcome developmental delays and build the skills they need to reach their full potential in life.
There is a lot of hi-tech equipment employed in the teleBUSHkids Centre to make the online sessions come to life for the kids. Our therapists use ‘green screen magic’, using felt backgrounds and Velcro pockets to project images onto their screens and use fun boardgame-like therapy tools to engage with the children. You can see more of how the sessions work – take a look at the kids in this video on our website: www.bushkids.org.au/clients/telebushkids/how-we-provide/
Cara Swann, one of our speech therapists based in Brisbane who specialises in telepractice, told me about the work she had been doing with Lucas[1], an energetic 5-year-old boy, who lives in the Sunshine Coast region and loves superheroes.
“I have been working with Lucas for a while. He has difficulty with some speech sounds and finds it challenging to produce the number of repetitions necessary to achieve progress towards his goals,” said Cara. “With the help of my green screen, I created a virtual Spiderman balloon that grew bigger and bigger every time he said his target sound, until it filled the whole background and then… POP! He collapsed in fits of giggles, then insisted on doing the activity again and again, progressing from producing an ‘s’ sound in isolation, to a blended ‘sp’ sound, and then the whole word ‘Spiderman’ by the end of a single session”.
With your ongoing support we will be able to invest in the telepractice tools and equipment we need to help more kids like Lucas, fully fitting out the new centre and providing equipment for our regional centres so they can all gain access to specialist therapy provided from the new teleBUSHkids Centre. Any gift of $2 or more is tax deductable and to make donation easier, you can give online through our website; go to bushkids.org.au and click on the ‘Donate’ button.
We couldn’t continue to provide our free services for kids and families in rural, regional, and remote Queensland without your help and it’s thanks to our generosity that we have been able make our teleBUSHkids Centre a reality. Thank you again for your support and I would like to take this opportunity to wish you a Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year.
Yours sincerely
Carlton Meyn
Chief Executive Officer
[1] While this is a real case, personal information about the child and location has been changed to protect the family’s privacy.
