Give Our Kids A Voice 

To those that might be members of CleftPALS you will know about this already but to those that aren't, I'll explain.

CleftPALS Australia Inc is a nationwide support group to help people with loved ones affected by Cleft Lip/Palate. This group was instrumental in having all of the orthodontic work our children need through their lives placed on the Medicare Scheme, making it bulk billed (and in effect - free) to all Australian families for children up to 28 years. Assistance covers expensive procedures such as braces, bands, tooth extractions etc.. All of this would have been very expensive but essential for our children. See What about Costs?

CleftPALS Australia Inc now has Speech Therapy in its sight and we need your help!!!

How many here know that their child will require extensive speech therapy as they grow? I know mine did.

Currently the situation here in SA is this:

- Through the Public Health system your child may or may not qualify for assistance. If so, this is provided here in SA on a 6 weekly review or other - dependent on your situation. Your service may differ and if so, I'd love to hear from you.

- Through the Government School Assistance program your child may or may not qualify for a Gov't Speech Therapist review, who creates a program for your child and the assistance is then provided by a School Assistant if one is available. Now, you will need to attend a NCP (Negotiated Curriculum Plan) meeting each year that will go to the Gov't for assessing and the school your child attends may be given extra funding to assist them to help your child. This lasts to Year 2 only then this assistance is no longer available. (We kept our son down in Yr 2 so he had another year of assistance on this scheme). Of course, this is while your child is already at school, so s/he may well have entered school with a speech problem and already behind the 8-ball.

- If you have private health cover you are assisted with the rebate of some or all of your sessions however this is a limited amount of money and if your child requires 2 or 3 sessions a fortnight for a severe speech problem this assistance is quickly used up. At around $80 per session for 40 minutes (based on my recent research of - admittedly - a select few Speechies) this can become very expensive.

What CleftPALS Australia Inc is doing is lobbying the Government to have Speech Therapy added to the Medicare Item Scheme so that all Speech therapy our children need is available to them and bulk billed to the Government. Much like the orthodontic work was, this is not a 'luxury' but a necessity for our kids.

Good speech is essential for our children to make it through their lives successfully and therefore we would like the Government to consider providing it to our children.

What we are doing is this:
- Approaching the Local Politicians for information about what they know is available to our children and what they believe they can do to help. If you're in SA and want to help me with this, please email me as I DO NEED HELP on this matter - you must be a member of CleftPALS SA though (sorry!).

Last year I stood on the steps of Parliament on November 10th - right after the Christmas Pageant and I got people passing by to sign my Petition. I managed to get a few signatures and was thrilled by this. Click here for photos.

 

This petition is available to all of you if you think you can gather names and signatures - so don't forget to ask me for it I'll send it electronically or through the post - whatever you need. You don't need to be a member of CleftPALS SA to do that :) (hint hint LOL)

If any of you want to be in on the ground floor of an exciting phase of this campaign and you have time to help by visiting Politicians (all information supplied) or you can gather names on a petition via your social circles, please let me know.

The bigger our impact at the Lobby the better the result will be for everyone's children....