While in the midst of coronavirus (COVID-19), HenderCare has continued to provide care to clients, adapting services where necessary.
An area that has quickly and seamlessly transitioned to accommodate COVID-19 requirements is Allied Health, with the use of Telehealth platforms. Telehealth has allowed our allied health therapists to continue their sessions with participants to help them maintain a healthy lifestyle through high-quality care and assessments.
To understand how Telehealth works for our allied health services, we spoke with the three of our senior occupational therapists to learn how they have adapted to the changing times and implemented a smooth transition into Telehealth for service recipients.
Senior Occupational Therapist, Emlyn Lewis says Telehealth has allowed services for participants to continue seamlessly as many of the services do not necessarily require a “face to face” element.
“Given most of our OT work with adult participants is completing assessments, we have been using Telehealth to collect the verbal information from our assessments, such as a person’s history, their occupational performance, challenges and their goals. This means we can complete any required “face to face” aspects of assessment in a shorter time frame and recommended preventative measures.”
Speaking with another of HenderCare’s senior occupational therapists, Alice Zubrinich, she spoke about how Telehealth allows participants, of which many are children, to keep up therapy in the comfort of their own homes and still have therapists keep in touch and monitor the participant’s progress.
“In terms of Paediatric participants – I have been making therapy plans for parents to carry out at home and then checking in with them via Telehealth to see how it’s going.
I have also done a lot of phone calls with parents and provided them advice on how to support their kids during this time and how to keep them entertained as well.”
For the Paediatric participants who are more suited to a one on one setting, these can be carried out by HenderCare therapists and Alice has been providing these consultations for children during this time.
Telehealth allows HenderCare’s occupational therapists to not only provide consultations and assessments, but senior occupational therapist Rachel Veiumuli noted that in particular circumstances, functional tasks can be observed using Telehealth, such as meal preparation.
HenderCare understands that Telehealth may not be a suitable option for all participants and in those cases, protective measures are being taken to ensure the in-home safety of both staff and participants.
To find out more about services provided by HenderCare’s Allied Health services, click the link below:
https://www.hendercare.com.au/services/allied-health/
Or call our team on 1300 764 433.