About Us
This is your real-life and things are important to you.
Listening, supporting and empowering is what we do.
At Functional Focus Therapy we are listening and we hear you. Our mission is to work alongside you to feel confident and empowered to live the life you want to live.
The Functional Focus Therapy story
Originally from the Central Coast, I (Luke) moved to Sydney after completing my degree in Occupational Therapy. Before re-locating back up the coast, I was lucky enough to work for an occupational therapy practice that supported so many families of neurodiverse children through their knowledge, care and flexibility in how they delivered their service. Bringing these invaluable learnings with me, in 2021 Functional Focus Therapy opened our doors in Belmont, Lake Macquarie with one clear guiding principle; to provide a high-quality and meaningful service within our local community.
From humble beginnings, and not without mistakes and speed bumps along the way, Functional Focus Therapy has grown over the last 3 years to be able to provide occupational therapy and speech therapy services either in the clinic or in people’s real-life contexts across Lake Macquarie and surrounding areas. The core of our service is to celebrate and advocate for neurodiversity while collaboratively empowering our clients to feel equipped in making informed decisions about the lives they want to live relative to their personal, educational or familial wants and needs.
We recognise that there are many barriers to accessing services such as family logistics and waiting lists. Our current position allows us to fulfill our mission by providing informative and useful resources to our broader community which can be found, for FREE right here. We also host community information evenings at local organisations, and have a blog specifically designed to answer your questions. No matter how, or why you ended up here, get in touch!
Luke Walsh
Occupational Therapist
Beth Walsh
Speech Therapist
Amy Caris
Office Administrator
Chloe Thompson
Allied Health Assistant
Our Team
Just like the clients and families we work with, each member of our team is unique, with their own diverse range of knowledge, experience and supports which we whole-heartedly celebrate. Professionally, we have occupational therapists and a speech therapist, along with a friendly administration team. But our team is so much more than our jobs. We have mothers, fathers, singers, sports people, walkers, gym goers, runners, readers, yogies, meditators, learners and much more.
Whilst our diversity is celebrated, the team at Functional Focus Therapy all share one primary vision; to listen to, support and empower ALL that we come into contact with. Working alongside any member of our team you can feel confident that what you communicate is heard with an open-mind and what is what is important to you will be what drives our decision making.
Some info about working with us
Functional Focus Therapy isn’t just a name, it’s a message. We will ALWAYS focus on what is functional in our clients’ lives.
So, what does that actually mean? To put it simply it is supporting real-life activities that our clients either want and/or need to do. This changes across the lifespan (specifically children and teenagers here at our service) and can typically be thought of across 3 broad categories; self-care tasks, leisure tasks and productive tasks (including school). Whether you’re accessing occupational therapy or speech therapy, we can guarantee one thing: we work alongside our clients and will aim to create increased participation and engagement in things that are necessary or meaningful for them.
Frequently asked questions
What is the cost?
Our standard hourly rate across the board is $190 per hour. This can be used as a guide for any therapeutic related services. These include direct intervention, phone calls, telehealth, resource creation (where relevant), travel and liaison with other professional services. Functional Focus Therapy does not charge clients for tasks such as session note documentation, session planning, reflection/future preparation, or general resource creation.
* Note: This can be slightly different for therapy groups and full details about our fees and charges can be found in our service agreement.
What is your cancellation policy?
For scheduled appointments (not inc. initial assessments or initial parent meetings), cancellation fees will be charged for any session that is cancelled the day before your scheduled appointment or later. As an example if you have a scheduled appointment on Tuesday the 23rd of January you will be charged a fee for any cancellation made on or after Monday the 22nd of January. Please note this is not 24-hours it is the day before. For clients paying privately our cancellation fee is 50% of the scheduled session fee and for clients with NDIS funding a 100% fee in incurred (per NDIA guidelines).
For initial parent meetings or initial assessments our cancellation period is 48-hours. If an initial parent meeting or initial assessment is cancelled within 48-hours of its scheduled time, a 50% fee of the session is incurred.
What is your waiting list like?
We have separate waiting lists for our occupational therapy and speech therapy services and like most services, our waiting lists fluctuate meaning it can often be difficult to give a concrete answer on wait times. Factors that typically decrease wait times include flexibility in appointment time availability and context (e.g. clinic or school sessions).
Our values
Empathy
We will always try our best to see things from the perspective of those we are working alongside. We haven’t walked in your shoes but we’re open to finding out what it’s like.
Competence
Staying up-to-date with relevant information allows us to best support our clients. Our clients being competent supports them to engage in their meaningful activities.
Community
Helping people to ‘find their tribe’. Creating positive connections with others in our local and broader communities because no-one deserves to feel alone.
