Abstract for presentation at 6th World Congress on Brain Injury

The Kids’ Team is an interdisciplinary team of allied health professionals based in a rural community setting. We provide a service for children with acquired brain injury (ABI), their families and their educators. We are based in the rural city of Albury on the NSW/Vic border. Like similar services, we are involved in a balancing act: juggling limited resources with the needs of clients in a geographically large, rural setting. A model of service delivery has been developed that attempts to take into account the challenges and needs of children, families and teachers in this setting. Service provision has been modelled, in part, on principles outlined by Ylvisaker & Feeney (1998) and uses a collaborative approach to assessment of need and development of therapeutic intervention strategies. Ongoing effort is made to identify for each child what is working, what is not and what requires modification.
Funded by the Motor Accident Authority (NSW) we recently undertook an evaluation of our service by surveying clients, their families and teachers. Participants were asked to identify what services they had received and to rate a number of aspects of service provision from their varying perspectives of being a child, parent, teacher or aide. Participants were also invited to respond to an open question asking them for suggestions about what aspects of the service are successful, what are not and what needs to be changed. The aim of this project was to evaluate various aspects of service delivery from the consumer point of view, and to use this to improve the effectiveness of services provided by The Kids’ Team.
This paper will present a description of the methodology, survey results and discussion of the findings. It will highlight the recommendations made and possible implications for other service providers.

Reference:
Ylvisaker, M. & Feeney, T. Collaborative brain injury intervention: positive everyday routines. Singular Publishing Group Inc., 1998.