A therapy assistant is someone trained by your child’s therapist that comes into your home and helps you carry out the home program for your child. Sometimes this is done as the child’s therapy requires two sets of hands. Other times it is done so you, the parent, can have a break.
Our principle therapist, Chad Timmermans, always educates parents that the most important therapy for a child is what is done in the home, not at the clinic. The volume of therapy a child needs to improve, to a new level of function, is significant. A therapy assistant can reduce the burden on the parents.
Chad’s father, Tim Timmermans, a long time paediatric therapist and Olympic swimming coach, always said: If you only train five or six times per week you won’t make it to the Olympics, you have to train 10 times per week. The same is true for a child with cerebral palsy or developmental delay. If you want to prove the doctors wrong then you have to work hard and be doing therapy as much as possible
Tim Timmermans was a therapist from 1965–2009. Times have changed however since Tim’s day. Families have less and less time. But the requirements for volume and frequency of therapy have not changed. So, to help families and children, we now suggest families use a Therapy Assistant to reduce the burden.
Therapy assistants don’t cost that much compared to a therapist. About one quarter to one third the price. Making it affordable to bring a therapy assistant into your home to help with therapy. All funded by the NDIS.
So take a page from Tim’s book. In order to increase the frequency and volume of therapy, consider getting a Therapy Assistant to help you out.