At Flying Start Children’s Therapy, we:

• Prepare for each of our client appointments properly; and

• Limit the number of clients we see each day to ensure we are providing a quality service to each client.

 

If you book an appointment with us and don’t turn up – or if you contact us to cancel an appointment less than 2 business days prior to your appointment time – three things happen:

• We lose the time we have spent preparing for your appointment – time we could have spent helping another client or helping you in another way.

• We may not have enough time to reschedule another client for your appointment time, which reduces the total number of clients we can help that day. This is not fair for people on our waiting list.

• We lose income, which makes it more difficult for us to invest adequately in our workers and resources to provide you and other clients with a quality service.

 

Our services and supports are most effective when we trust and value each other’s work.  We appreciate that unexpected things happen – e.g., cars break down, people get sick, important travel commitments crop up at short notice. But no shows and late cancellations – particularly if they happen more than once – can interfere with our trust in each other and, over time, can affect a client’s overall quality of care. We take pride in our work and don’t want this to happen.

 

Agreement

As noted in our Service agreement, booking a face-to-face or telehealth service, support, assessment, therapy session, intervention session, group program, intensive program, consultation, training, or other appointment with us creates a binding contract between you and us.

 

By making the booking on behalf of yourself or a child under your care, you confirm that you are authorised to agree to these terms and conditions.

 

We provide our services and supports to you subject to this Agreement. You should read through it carefully before making a booking for an Appointment. We may change the terms and conditions of this Agreement, but will always provide adequate notification to clients and their families if we are to do this.  The latest version will appear on our website at www.flyingstartchildrenstherapy.com.au  and you can also ask any of our team for a copy.  

 

Appointment Bookings

When an appointment is made, you will be sent an appointment confirmation via SMS/email.  

 

If you have not received your appointment confirmation within 48 hours of a confirmed booking, please check your spam or junk email folder or filter and, if it’s not there, please contact us.

 

The Fee Schedule for our services is provided in our Initial Appointment Confirmation Email or can be provided at your request.

 

Cancellations, changes to bookings and failures to attend appointments

Flying Start aims to balance client interests with organisational needs in relation to cancellations and failures to attend, in order to make all reasonable attempts to safeguard children’s access to therapy.

 

For all appointments, a reminder SMS is sent 2 days prior to the scheduled appointment.  

 

Cancellation Types

• Cancellation with Notice: Cancellation two business days prior to the scheduled service delivery. Where supports are cancelled with notice, no charge applies.

• Cancellation without Notice: When notice is provided less than two business days prior to the scheduled service delivery.

• Cancellations without notice/failure to attend, we charge 100% of the service cost.  This includes travel time. 

• Health/Covid Related: You will be offered an Online or Phone consultation or the completion of non contact work in lieu of the appointment.

Cancellations without notice/failure to attend, we charge 100% of the service cost.  This includes travel time. 

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For all cancellations, our therapists will offer to update goals, consult/communicate with other therapists/teachers, score assessments, write reports, develop resources or update Family Service and Support Plan as an alternative to the cancelled appointment.

 

How to cancel an appointment

To cancel an appointment, clients can notify Flying Start at any time by either:

1. Contacting their therapist on their work mobile, by ringing or via SMS

2. Contact administration by calling (Ph: 03 5264 7430) or by emailing (E: enquiries@fsct.com.au)

 

Group session cancellations

NDIS policy is to split group session costs between participants. Therefore, all cancelled group sessions will be charged. This will ensure attending children’s NDIS fund plans are not charged more than anticipated.

 

Special Circumstances

Charges may be waived if the client has experienced a significant event.

The decision to waive the cost will be made by Flying Start management. The discretion not to charge for planned services does not apply in any other circumstances.

 

Discharge due to Cancellations

Flying Start retains the right to discharge a client if they meet the following criteria:

• 3 cancellations in a row, with and without notice

• 3 cancellations within 5 scheduled sessions, with and without notice

• Lack of engagement in services: No sessions booked for 4 weeks against therapist recommendations.

 

The pausing of services must be discussed with the therapist prior to taking a therapy break. This is to ensure children receive therapy at the consistency required to address their goals and areas of development. It also takes into consideration the high number of children on our waiting list seeking Flying Start’s services. If we need to cancel an Appointment for any reason (e.g. if your therapist is ill), we may do so at any t ime before the Appointment is scheduled to begin. We do not expect this to happen except in exceptional circumstances, and we’ll offer you a choice of alternative dates for the Appointment, either in person or Telehealth.  

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Attendance and Expected Conduct

Please ensure you arrive on time for each Appointment. Therapists often are not able to wait more than 15 minutes for a late appointment.  Please notify your therapist as soon as you know you will be late.   Because of scheduling constraints, late arrivals session times will end at the regularly scheduled time. If you are late and your therapist needs to see your child for a shorter amount of time, you will be charged for the entire scheduled session.

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It is expected that families collect children from therapy/group programs at the allocated time.  Failure to do so may incur additional costs.

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It is expected that you and all people under your care attending an Appointment comply with all health and safety and other rules and regulations applicable to our premises. You must not bring onto our premises any illegal or hazardous items. You must comply with any reasonable request by a team member at our premises (for example, and without limitation, requests relating to infection control or the health and safety of our staff).

 

Version V2: 21.11.2023