1. What NDIS Services are available through Cognilab?
We provide capacity building services to NDIS participants to improve their daily living and to increase a person’s skills, independence, and participation in the community.
We offer support worker services to existing therapy clients who need consistent support from trained individuals to access the community, socially participate, or assist them with daily activities.
2. What therapy do you provide?
Our therapists are highly trained in behaviour science, and use evidence-based practices to address a person’s disability-related support needs to improve all areas of functional capacity, as required.
We are the only clinic-based therapy service in Perth offering intensive direct services to disabled young people with challenging behaviour who do not rely on restrictive practices to improve safety and independence.
We build new skills by breaking down behaviours that a client needs to learn into tiny pieces or slices, and then we apply scientific principles to ethically enable the individual to practise those skills and achieve the target behaviour goal.
We use a mix of qualified graduates and undergraduates, who are trained to work as therapy assistants and support workers where appropriate.
3. Where is your clinic?
We are based in Claremont, Perth.
Our Clinical Director provides consultation to parents and professionals for services outside our Clinic.
4. What professional memberships are held by staff?
Our Clinical Director is a Board Certified Behaviour Analyst – further information about her membership can be found here – https://www.bacb.com/bcba/
5. Do you offer services in a client’s natural environment?
Yes, we deliver services in a child’s home, school, or community through parent and professional training. This is essential for ensuring that skills learned in therapy are used in real-life situations, a process known as generalisation.
6. How are families and caregivers involved?
Parent and caregiver involvement is a core component of our program. We work with families to ensure the skills we teach are practiced and reinforced consistently in all environments.
Parents and guardians of our clients are able to observe our therapy sessions at any time, and have ongoing access to all data and session notes.
7. Do you collaborate with mainstream service providers?
Yes, we actively collaborate with all members of a person’s support network, including their teachers, allied health professionals, medical doctors, and other specialists.
We regularly welcome other stakeholders to our clinic and provide training to teams so that consistent therapeutic interventions can be implemented consistently.
8. Are you an education provider?
No, we are not an education service provider for NDIS funded learners. At our clinic, we employ some staff to deliver tutoring services to private clients. Our NDIS clients are not eligible to enrol in our private tutoring program.
Our NDIS therapy programs are a separate service and are informed by an individual’s NDIS goals and disability-related support needs. Educational curriculum or academic performance goals do not feature in our therapy programs. There are times when we may teach a skill or behaviour and use materials that support cognitive development and learning, but our team are measuring the frequency, intensity or duration of a specific behaviour that is not related to our client’s education. Specific examples of therapy programs and goals are provided in the additional FAQ documentation*.
9. Do your staff implement restrictive practices?
No, we do not.
10. What are your fees?
Our therapy services come under the category of Improved Daily Living and our hourly rates will match the maximum amount in the NDIS Pricing Arrangements. The NDIS Support item codes we usually use are:
– 15_053_0128_1_3 for participants over 9
– 15_008_0118_1_3 for under 9s
We offer Early Intensive Behavioural Intervention programs, beginning at 10 hours a week.
For clients with less significant support needs or insufficient levels of funding, we will assess their disability-related support needs and discuss if we can provide anyvalue-for money services at a less intensive model.
We typically do not provide services to NDIS clients unless we work with them for at least 2 hours a day / five days per week. If a therapy client has Core support funding, and we have capacity to train and provide a support worker for that client to assist with daily activities and social participation, then we will discuss any opportunities with the client and their family. The NDIS Core Supports item code most applicable to the needs of the client, and the day / time of the supports provided will be used.
11. Are you a registered NDIS provider?
No. We are an unregistered NDIS provider. This means that only participants who self-manage or plan-manage their NDIS plan can choose to use their NDIS funding to purchase our services.
12. Are Speech Pathologists or Occupational Therapists involved in Cognilab’s therapy programs?
Yes, we work with consulting allied health specialists as needed.
Sometimes, we need to ask an expert in a particular field what is the best goal for that individual, taking into consideration a co-occurring condition (e.g. apraxia, dysphagia, cerebral palsy) as there may be a motor planning or physical support need that we have notbeen trained in that we must factor into our own therapy programming.
Our staff access specialist training from other providers as needed, and are committed to ongoing professional development, consultation and collaboration.
13. What standardized assessments do you use?
Our assessments are not focused on a single score or a diagnosis but on understanding what skills a person needs to learn to be more independent. We have developed our own assessments to measure the fluency of foundational skills. When a client needs support to achieve mastery in that area, we identify a therapy goal, add that to our client’s program, and provide that therapeutic intervention, taking data throughout each session so that it can inform the next.
14. What does a ‘therapy session’ look like?
When assessing and teaching a new behaviour or skill, we often work at a desk with an individual. We find out how each individual learns best, and how we can provide them with positive attention and responses that maximises learning opportunities.
Therapy sessions are typically between two and four hours long, with lots of movement breaks and integrated play. When each component of a new skill or behaviour has been successfully taught, and our clients are fluent when using it, we then use evidence-based strategies, such as Natural Environment Teaching, and train other stakeholders to support our client to generalise that skill so that we can collect data to know they are applying their new skills autonomously as needed. Therapy sessions may then take place in any natural environment as best meets the needs of our clients.
15. How do you measure the progress made?
We measure progress continually and systematically using data and measurement procedures from Behaviour Science. This data is typically presented in a Standard Celeration Chart or other graphs to show a person’s progress over time. This ensures our therapy is always effective and adjusted based on the individual’s needs and immediately by our trained team.
16. Do clients have to complete therapy sessions at your clinic?
It depends on what is best for the individual client. We like to meet clients face to face at our clinic and establish a positive relationship. If our data then show that we can achieve success through online therapy sessions, or in a range of other environments then we work collaboratively with the client and their team to design a completely individualised schedule of supports. We recommend that clients begin therapy programs exclusively at the clinic if there is a history of trauma or a risk of restricted practices being implemented in other settings. This aligns with the NDIS Code of Conduct and appropriate ethical guidelines. Clients who attend our clinic exclusively on a more long term basis do so only when they have complex behaviour support needs and are not able to engage, learn or be safe in other settings without very significant intensive behavioural intervention programs.
In these cases, we prioritise therapy goals to teach safe independent behaviours and enable the individual to feel good about ‘attending’ and ‘noticing’ what other people do and say. We then provide lots of opportunities for them to practise these new skills and experience how these skills can be used to meet their own needs, e.g. being able to request, being able to communicate yes and no functionally, being able to dress and feed themselves, use the toilet independently, cross the road safety, develop speech and so on.
17. Do you offer Specialist Behaviour Support Services for NDIS participants?
No, we do not. Unless we have a specific request or written permission directly from the NDIS, we do not offer supports that can be purchased using NDIS funding from the Improved Relationships category. Historically, there have been some exceptions made in individual complex cases where both restrictive practices and functional assessments have not been required. This has usually occurred when a participant has not been able to find suitably skilled and experienced providers and regression, unsafe behaviour or insufficient progress is evident.
18. How are your therapy services different from the capacity-building services from a Positive Behaviour Support Practitioner?
Our services are billed under Capacity Building – Improved Daily Living. Our primary focus is on intensive skill-building for an individual. We implement a proactive, “constructional” approach, and aim to build capacity byincreasing the repertoire of adaptive behaviours and skills an individual can independently utilise. We ‘teach the person’ through intensive direct service.
A Positive Behaviour Support (PBS) practitioner’s services are billed under Capacity Building – Improved Relationships. Their services are usually as a reaction to observed “behaviours of concern” – behaviours that pose a risk of harm to the participant or other people.
19. Under guidelines from the NDIS a PBSP, or those providing Specialist Behaviour
Support Services do not necessarily implement a direct service model of therapy with the participant, but design behaviour support plans and complete functional assessments to identify environmental adjustments or amend existing interactions that may reduce the identified behaviours of concern. A PBSP then may teach the carers and the other adults around the individual to make changes that increase safety and participation in their setting.
