Waiting List Information

At Cooee Speech Pathology we strive to provide our families with high quality care with a team that is dedicated to supporting families in a nurturing, engaging and happy environment.  As a part of this care, we believe that it is important for you to have full transparency as to what is involved with our waiting list.  We know how difficult it is to access ongoing therapy with extensive waiting lists, limited availability and quality therapy therefore, we wanted to provide you with some information and access to resources to support you while you are waiting to commence your therapy journey with Cooee. 

How Our Waiting List Works

As you are aware we currently have an extensive waiting list of families looking to access speech and/or occupational therapy services.  This means that there is up to a  12 months wait for accessing therapy.  This is dependent upon ongoing therapy times becoming available in our therapists schedules and your availability. If for example you are available during school hours the waiting time would not be as long.  

For full transparency, we prioritise existing and returning clients first and then new families on our waiting list.  If you have more flexibility with your availability then this can support us to find you a suitable therapy time within a shorter period of time.  For example, if you are available to attend therapy during school hours, there is more flexibility with ongoing appointments becoming available.  Additionally, if a last minute assessment becomes available standard and NDIS self managed clients are considered first as there is the extra step of providing a service agreement is not required.

Therapy Options

All of our ongoing Speech Pathology and Occupational Therapy services are booked forward in our system on either a weekly or fortnightly basis only.  If you would like to complete an assessment while waiting for an available therapy time we can certainly look for something and contact you when there is availability for the assessment.  This would also mean that you would be placed higher on the priority list for ongoing therapy times as you are now an existing client.  We also offer the following options for families looking to access therapy via an alternative way.

• Telehealth – an online platform with your therapist from the comfort of your home
• One-Off Assessment – for families who are requiring a report or assessment to provide to school, a medical specialist or the NDIS for a planning review/planning meeting.
• Intensives – a short block of 5 to 6 therapy sessions over a 2 to 3 week period.  This can be ideal for families who prefer holiday blocks of therapy.  We currently have intensive blocks of therapy for the following areas:
  • Speech Clarity
  • Early Language
  • Handwriting & Fine Motor Skills
• Parent Information and Education Sessions – these sessions provide  families with information to support their children outside of therapy on the following topics:
  • Feeding
  • AAC use and troubleshooting
  • Prep Readiness
• Groups – Cooee Speech Pathology runs a variety of groups to support children on their therapy journey.  These include:
  • Social Skills 
  • Preschool Language
  • School Aged Language and Communication 
  • Prep Readiness 
  • Speech Clarity 
  • Interoception 
  • Handwriting and Fine Motor Skills 
  • Executive Function
  • Holiday Craft

If you would like to know more about our groups CLICK HERE to register your interest or view more information. 

Additionally, if you access any of the above services at Cooee your are then recognised as an existing or returning client which places you higher on the priority list for an ongoing therapy time.

How We Will Contact You

When an ongoing therapy time becomes available with one of our therapists on your preferred days and times, our client care team will be in touch with you via your preferred method of contact (phone call or email).  If you are unable to be reached or do not reply by the stated return contact time, our client care team will offer the appointment to another family on our waiting list. 

Every 2 months our waiting list manager will send out an email to see if you would like to remain on our waiting list.  You can either respond YES to the email to remain or can click UNSUBSCRIBE to be removed.  

Each family will receive 3 contacts for an offer of therapy via your stated preferred method before being removed from our waiting list.  At this time, our waiting list manager will contact you via email to confirm your removal from the list.  

We hope that this information is helpful in providing you transparency in how our waiting list works.  If you have any questions you can contact our friendly client care team on (07) 3265 4495 or via email at [email protected].