Allied Health

The Allied Health Team.

Mental Health Practitioner 

Our Mental Health Practitioner is a qualified social worker. She provides short-term mental health counselling for students with mild to moderate mental health issues, coordinates supports for students with complex needs, facilitates student groups, leads classroom activities on various wellbeing topics, contributes to whole-school mental health promotion, and upskills school staff on how to support young people’s wellbeing in the classroom. The Mental Health Practitioner contributes to whole-school wellbeing initiatives such as Resilience, Rights and Respectful Relationships (RRRR) and School-Wide Positive Behaviour Support (SWPBS).

More information about the Mental Health Practitioner initiative in Victorian schools can be found here: https://www.vic.gov.au/mental-health-practitioners-secondary-and-specialist-schools?Redirect=1

Speech Therapist

The speech therapists at Katandra Berendale works alongside teaching staff within the classroom to assist students to communicate as independently and effectively as possible. This may include working 1:1 or in small groups to focus on skills relating to;

• speaking
• listening
• understanding language
• reading
• writing
• social skills
• stuttering/voice

The speech therapists also supports students with life skills such as making friends, coping with change, understanding signs in the community and ordering at a café. Another key role of the speech therapist is to collaborate with private therapists that students may be working with in the community to provide consistency of services across the school and home environments. Parents are always welcome to contact the speech therapist at school to discuss their child’s communication needs. Please phone the school if you wish to refer your child to speech therapy services.

Occupational Therapist

The Occupational Therapist works alongside teaching staff within the classroom to conduct observations and assessments to identify individual goals, strengths and barriers to learning. Upon completion, the occupational therapist will recommend strategies or changes to the classroom environment to increase the students’ capacity to participate. This may include working 1:1 or in a small group to develop on skills relating to:

• Self-care tasks (dressing, toileting, handwashing)
• Fine motor skills (handwriting, typing)
• Gross motor skills (throwing, catching, jumping, skipping etc)
• Emotional regulation (recognising and understanding emotions)
• Sensory processing
• Social skills (turn taking, waiting, managing emotions with winning/losing, interacting with others appropriately)

Another key role of the occupational therapist is to collaborate with private therapists that students may be working with in the community to provide consistency of services across the school and home environments. Parents are always welcome to contact the occupational therapist at school to discuss their child’s OT needs. Please contact the school if you wish to refer your child to occupational therapy services.

Respectful Relationships.

Respectful Relationships supports schools to promote and model respect, positive attitudes and behaviours.

As a Leading School in the Bayside Peninsula Area for Respectful Relationships, we strongly believe in equipping our learners with meaningful strategies that support their emotional regulation and ability to actively problem solve within the wider community. Through the Respectful Relationships program, we are able to allow our school community to build healthy relationships that display respect, integrity, resilience and independence.

Background about the program.

The Royal Commission into Family Violence identified the critical role that schools and early childhood education have in creating a culture of respect to change the story of family violence for future generations.

In 2016, respectful relationships education became a core component of the Victorian Curriculum from Foundation to year 12 and is being taught in all government and Catholic schools and many independent schools.

Everyone in our community deserves to be respected, valued and treated equally. We know that changes in attitudes and behaviours can be achieved when positive attitudes, behaviours and equality are embedded in our education settings.

Respectful Relationships is about embedding a culture of respect and equality across our entire community, from our classrooms to staffrooms, sporting fields, fetes and social events. This approach leads to positive impacts on student’s academic outcomes, their mental health, classroom behaviour, and relationships between teachers and students.

Together, we can lead the way in saying yes to respect and equality, and creating genuine and lasting change so that every child has the opportunity to achieve their full potential.

More information regarding the Department of Education and Trainings commitment to Respectful Relationships for all Government schools can be found here.