Together Thriving

✨ Alissa ✨

Our wonderful 3rd year OT student completed placement here with us in Mudgee.
Alissa you were a fabulous addition to our team and we wish you all the best for your next placement and continued studies.
Thank you to our amazing team of OT's, Alissa's primary supervisor Chelsea, who all did a wonderful job supporting Alissa.

The Together Thriving office will be closed on Monday 10th June in celebration of the King's Birthday and will reopen on Tuesday 11th June.

💐Happiest of birthday's Kirsty, hope you have an amazing day 💐

A little reminder to keep working towards those goals!

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Repurpose corks into fun activities for the kids.

Corks can be used for so many different activities.
- Shape, letter or number sort/ match
- Paint dabbers
- Craft activities including floating boats, butterflies and snowman

If you are looking for a quick, simple and fun activity after school or on the weekends, why not reuse some household items.

The National Reconciliation Week theme for 2024, Now More Than Ever, is a reminder to all of us that no matter what, the fight for justice and the rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people will —and must —continue.

There have been many moments in Australia’s reconciliation journey that make us want to turn away. But when things are divisive, the worst thing we can do is disengage or disconnect.

Words taken from National Reconciliation website.

We finished up the recent Girls Group by watching the short documentary ‘Embrace Kids’, directed by 2023 Australian of the Year Taryn Brumfitt.

The girls really enjoyed watching this documentary that was about body positivity and the influences of body imaging on social media.

It can be found on Binge and is a great show to watch with your sons and daughters!

When supporting kids with friendships, explaining the difference between friends, frenemies and bullies can be really helpful.

Frenemies (friend/enemies) are those friends that you can be friendly with or in certain environments, but at other times or when around other people they may talk behind our back or change the way they act around us.

Mind mapping the qualities of each of these type of friends can be a great way to visually explain to kids who are their quality friends.

Friendship circles or flowers can be a great activity to teach kids about the different types of people in our lives.

They provide a visual for kids to understand who are the people they trust and love the most and expanding out to strangers. This activity can be used to teach kids boundaries, who they can go to when they need help and what type of behaviour is appropriate to different people.

Friendships are a common challenge for kids. Over the next few posts we are going to do a short series on some practical friendship activities to do with your kids.

First up - try mapping out good friendship qualities or good ways to be a friend.

Try out this Kindness Bingo.

One of the great resources found on the ‘Do it for Dolly’ website.

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Hello Mudgee kids!

This year, the CMRI Mudgee Committee is creating a new campaign designed to raise funds and awareness for the Children’s Medical Research Institute.

Because there are so many children who benefit from the research CMRI conducts that live locally, we’d love to give them a platform to show who they are and share why CMRI is such an important organisation to them.

Is this something you’d be interested in being part of?

We are doing a photoshoot in Mudgee on Thursday 16th of May at 5pm.

Once complete, the photos/posters will be shared across our social platforms and with our email database from July 1-August 2 to help raise much-needed funds.

All money raised from sharing these images/posters goes directly to CMRI to continue funding research.

If this is something your child (who has a genetic disorder or disease) is interested in learning more about, we’d love to hear from you.

Please email:
[email protected]

Sincerely,
CMRI Mudgee Committee

From all at Together Thriving we take this opportunity to wish all mothers and mother figures a very special Mother’s Day.

We thank you for all you do!

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Dolly’s Dream was created by Kate and Tick Everett following the shattering loss of their 14-year-old daughter, Dolly, to su***de, after ongoing bullying. Kate and Tick’s goal is to prevent other families walking this road. They want to change the culture of bullying by addressing the impact of bullying, anxiety, depression and youth su***de, through education and direct support to young people and families. Dolly’s Dream is proudly brought to you by the Alannah & Madeline Foundation.

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Information taken from the ‘Do it from Dolly’ website.

During the Girls Group in term 1 we talked about cyberbullying and bullying and many of the resources used were from the ‘Do it for Dolly’ resources.

We discussed the importance of talking to someone you trust and not keeping it ‘bottled up inside’, or from the words of Dolly’s Dream ‘speak even if your voice shakes’.

The foundation also has an app called ‘beacon’ which has great education and resources for parents/carers and teenagers.

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A huge happy birthday to our OT, Chelsea, who celebrated her birthday over the weekend!

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She’s taking some well deserved time off to enjoy herself. Thanks for giving us a reason to enjoy some cheesecake last week Chelsea!

✨ Term 1 Goals ✨

Term 1 saw some amazing goal achievements at Together Thriving!

Identifying emotions and body clues, following instructions, balancing, catching and aiming, successful community outings, learning to walk, toileting, counting, knowing letters of their name, writing their name, scissor skills and completing tricky puzzles.

How brilliant is our TT family!

✨ Client Coordinator ✨

This part time position is ideal for someone who likes working with both people and information. You would be the main point of contact for our clinic, liaising between therapists and families, creating a general workflow and ensuring procedures and systems are followed. Our preferred candidate will be personable and courteous and relish in the challenge of keeping our busy office organised and efficient. We are a close-knit team of five paediatric therapists so you’ll get to know the team quickly, and the families and children that we work with are guaranteed to brighten up your day, too.

Daily tasks include general office management and coordinating the client journey, reception tasks such as answering the phone and managing emails, data entry, assisting therapists with their workflow, social media management and basic graphic design.

Our preferred candidate will be a great communicator and have the proven ability to work independently and as part of a team on a wide range of tasks, sound knowledge of G-suite, be highly organised with high attention to detail. Experience in office administration and client coordination is highly regarded.

Please call Kirsty with enquiries Ph: 0438 678 322 or email applications to [email protected]

Autism Awareness Month

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‘School might not be the place where many neurodivergent children will find their tribe, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t out there. In fact, we have the ability to find the most beautiful side kicks. At our own time, in our own place.’ Chloé Hayden

✨ Bella ✨

We are proud as punch of Bella who recently completed her 4th year OT placement with us in Mudgee AND we were lucky enough to have her return after her placement to help us out with our school holiday programs.

Bella, you were a wonderful addition to our team and we wish you all the best on your next placement!

A huge shoutout to our amazing team of OT’s, especially her primary supervisor Emily, who did such a wonderful job in supporting Bella.

Lest we forget

The Together Thriving office is closed today to honour those who served, and currently serve, our country.

Autism Awareness Month

Chloé Hayden explains beautifully what it’s like to experience a meltdown in her book, Different, Not Less.

‘You know the static screen of a television - no signal but a loud, fuzzy, fast-moving, nonsensical picture? You know that feeling when you’re between sleep and wakefulness and someone tries to talk to you - nothing makes sense and they may as well be speaking in Sims game language? They are what having a meltdown feels like.’

Autism Awareness Month

Just because an emotion isn’t shown, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. This is a common misconception of Autistic people. Autistic people often feel emotions very deeply, however it might be communicated differently.

The ‘double empathy problem’ refers to a breakdown in understanding between two people. It calls on both Autistic and non-Autistic people to show grace and compassion in the face of difference and not assume a lack of capacity for understanding.

Autism Awareness Month

Holding it together and fitting in can be exhausting. Often on the surface things may appear calm, but underneath Autistic people work so hard to get through a day of school, work or being in the community.

‘Letting it all out’ after school is a very common scenario with many families we work with.

Autism Awareness Month!

Eye contact is not an essential part of listening!

Autistic people sometimes have a natural tendency to avert eye contact which does not mean they aren’t listening. In fact, it often makes it easier for them to listen and process verbal information. Just because someone isn’t looking at you doesn’t mean they aren’t listening.

As part of neurodiversity affirming practice we do not teach eye contact at TT and strongly discourage ‘masking’ which is well documented to impact negatively on mental health.

Autism Awareness Month

How do we learn about Autism? We listen to Autistic voices. We hear their perspective, we listen to their stories and we learn about lived experiences. Everyone’s story is unique and it’s only by asking and listening that we can know better and do better.

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Chloé Hayden award winning actor and disability advocate, has written this amazing book in which she shares the details of her life.

This is her take on stimming:

‘Stimming is a normal, necessary part of human existence, and it’s something we need to normalise, understand, accept and grow comfortable with. As I’ve gotten older and realised that society’s expectations are only as firm as we allow them to be, I’ve discovered that allowing myself to unmask and be my authentic autistic self - stims and all - has unleashed more ability than I ever had when I was locking myself away.’

Autism Awareness Month

Strengths and interests are what drive and motivate everyone, including Autistic people.

Autism diagnoses are typically based on a person’s deficits. But we are seeing a shift where many people are calling for a strength’s based approach that seeks to understand Autistic people and their individual strengths while acknowledging areas where support is needed.

TT has long been advocates for strength based approaches and know that working with individual interests is where the magic happens.

April is Autism Awareness Month.

Not only do we need more awareness, but we also need more understanding and acceptance.

If you know one Autistic person, you know one Autistic person. Autism looks different for everyone.

About 370,000 Australians are Autistic and each person has different strengths, interests, challenges and aspirations.

🐣 🐣 HAPPY EASTER 🐣 🐣

Our office will be closed from 29th March, reopening April 2nd.

Wishing everyone a happy and safe Easter break.