Eat Speak Learn loves being part of the Canberra community and we connect in so many different ways. Our team have each committed to doing an hour of community engagement outside their normal roles each term as part of our community promise.
We have a long standing relationship with Marymead and ACT Playgroups and have been privileged to learn from them as well as attend events such as Boundless Buddies. These relationships are focused on our team educating the community, especially new parents, on what supports are out there and being able to direct families to the appropriate services. It’s common for families not to understand the intricacies of applying for NDIS funding through Feros Care or Each or accessing free services, such as the Child Development Service and its important to get good advice on that journey. We’re grateful to have a great relationship with Renee from Guardian Advocacy who is always there to support those that can’t advocate for themselves.
We’re proud supporters of the Ricky Stuart Foundation and are working with them to build that relationship into an education role as well as making financial contributions towards their projects.
We’ve loved supporting community sports groups. Our first sponsorship was with the West Belconnen Junior Rugby League Club. We sponsor the Canberra City Cricket Club. As part of our relationship with this club we provide an award for the Female Cricketer of the Year. Chris and Lauren are passionate about supporting women in the community as well as the workplace so much so that they even pay the membership fees for one female each season in what is traditionally a male dominated arena.
We have a agreements in place with a number of Universities and Tafes including our local UC to provide observations and clinical placements to Speech Pathology and Allied Health Assistants. We’ve also supported year 10 school students, including our wonderful Ruby, to complete work experience with us.
Whilst Eat Speak Learn is primarily an in-clinic service, we do facilitate a number of outreach services into the community. We love working with schools, preschools and childcare centres across the ACT. Since the Covid pandemic commenced we’ve been able to deliver these services more innovatively through technology and find better ways of connecting with educators. We’ve been privileged to deliver a number of training sessions to teachers and educators across the years.
We’re honoured to work with Libraries ACT to deliver Speechie Talks.
We’re excited about the new adventures our friends at Dice 4 Diversity are undertaking.
Thanks to Gareth and the team at Capital Chemist UC for always getting in our random orders of fluid thickener to support our feeding assessments and the enormous quantities of hand sanitiser you were able to provide at short notice. And thanks to Gareth from Sportscare Physiotherapy. Your guidance and counsel of how to build a sustainable clinic were invaluable.
We love finding like minded allied health professionals and working closely and collaboratively with them. There are so many fantastic things we can learn from each other.
This year we’ve commenced formal partnerships with EmPower Exercise Physiology, House on the Hill Paediatric OT, Eat’n’Grow Dietetics to broaden our range of services and we are proud to launch our Feeding Group tomorrow!
We continue to work closely with the lovely Ann from Cocoon Counselling who has been an incredible help to many of our clients but also our team when support is needed. We’ve been the beneficiaries of excellent advice from Nicholas and the team at Capital Psychology Clinic. We’ve been having some great discussions with the remarkable Sam from SP Specialist Inclusion Services and Sumita from Kids Space OT on how we build further on our relationship to have a bigger impact for our common clients.
We’ve created some memorable moments sharing supervision training with the teams from Early Bird Therapy and Muddy Puddles. We’ve been lucky enough to witness the sensational Cyclabilites program and will be working with the team there to help our clients access their incredible range of services. Watching Lauren teach kids to ride a bike was a sight to behold – she’s not known for her ability to stay vertical upon two wheels herself!
Lauren worked with the founders of Little Hands OT and MyOT at Therapy ACT. Our clinics have delivered a number of joint sessions and group therapies over the years but the relationship is much deeper than that. There’s been many a meal and wine shared over the years, especially in the early days as everyone found their feet as new business owners.
We were so lucky to have the founders of Unity and Clear Kids as part of our team. Watching their practices grow and continue to support the community together is fantastic. The ACT Speech Pathology community does catch up quite regularly and it’s a great opportunity to problem solve common issues (waitlists are a standard agenda item). Lauren does a lot of organising in this space along with some of the other clinic owners. Meaghan from CanSpeak does a wonderful job in keeping the local private practice list up to date. Janelle from Capital Therapy Services is a tireless organiser of clinical catch ups, as well as being the generous donator of our first reception desk.
Outside of Canberra, we work closely with network of clinics across Australia to discover ways we can provide better services to our clients. But we also work closely together to deliver a monthly in-house professional development program. A huge thanks to the teams at A Growing Understanding, Speechease, Kids Spot, Cooee and Top End Speech for your generosity of time, ideas and knowledge.
Through the work that we’ve done in building Eat Speak Learn, it’s opened up opportunities in the community to share learnings and expertise. Chris has recently joined the board of the Canberra Blind Society after working with them towards their vision of providing allied health and social services to their community.
We love being a part of a big-hearted community. Thank you to all our partners for your inspiration, assistance and the incredible outcomes you bring to all those around you.
