Geelong has grown quickly as a regional centre, and the people we work with are spread across very different settings: established suburbs like Newtown and Belmont, the growth corridors around Corio and Armstrong Creek, and the coastal towns of the Bellarine and Surf Coast such as Ocean Grove and Torquay. Distances between these places can be real, so we combine in-person visits with remote and telehealth support to keep things moving without families having to travel long stretches of the Bellarine Highway for every session.
Being a regional area, Geelong doesn't always have the same density of behaviour support practitioners as Melbourne, and that can mean longer waits. We aim to ease that by drawing on practitioners who know the region and by using telehealth where it suits, so that a participant in a quiet Ocean Grove or Barwon Heads pocket, a Torquay beach town, or a Corio housing estate can all access support at a reasonable pace.
Across Geelong and the Bellarine, a person's week often hops between a mainstream school, an allied health clinic and a community program, and we stay in step with each of those so the strategies don't get reinterpreted at every door. Talking regularly with local schools and support coordinators keeps one shared approach in play.