With Allied Therapy Services having provided team based therapy services to the community for 4 years now we thought it was about time that we introduced the team! With this being the very first blog post to hit the Allied Therapy Services social media sites it made sense to start at the beginning and find out who the woman behind the scenes of this successful service actually is!

Naomi Doody is an occupational therapist and opened the doors to Allied Therapy Services in 2016 while on maternity leave with her 2nd child.

With Naomi about to have her 4th baby any time now it was a great opportunity to interview her before she heads off to focus on being a Mum again for a while.

For those of you that don’t know Allied Therapy Services, we are a team of over 55 therapists that service;

• Geelong

• Ballarat

• Bendigo

• Warrnambool

• Western Melbourne

• Albury Wodonga

and the surrounding areas.

On the team we have highly skilled;

• Speech Pathologists

• Occupational Therapists

• Physiotherapists

All of the therapists have a minimum of 2 years experience and many have between 15-20 years in their chosen field.

Welcome Naomi. Can you start off by telling us a bit about yourself?

There isn’t a huge amount to tell about myself! I’m a Mum of 3, (and a half kids, number 4 is due in September). I’ve lived my whole life in Victoria in both metropolitan and regional locations, I currently live with my family in Geelong. I studied to become an OT at La Trobe University and have had the privilege of working across large public health networks, private companies, universities and partaking in research. But I have to admit it’s my current role building a high quality community-based allied health service that I am most enjoying!

You opened the doors to Allied Therapy Services just a few years ago. Can you tell us what your vision for Allied Therapy Services was, and why you started the company?

I find that my vision for Allied Therapy Services is continually evolving. If you spoke with me when we first started back in 2016 I would have never thought we would have multiple teams providing services across Victoria.

One part of our vision that has remained constant is to make high quality team based allied health services available to people within the community, regardless of where they live in Victoria! I would love people who live rurally in a small country town to have equal access to high quality allied health services, (which includes ease of access) as people who live in metropolitan Melbourne.

The high quality of the services we provide has also been a part of my vision that hasn’t changed. We are very particular about who we let work with us in our teams, which is why we ensure all our therapists have a certain level of experience as well as being really great people to work with. And we have that, I’m so proud of our teams and the great skilled therapists we have working with us.

“I WOULD LOVE PEOPLE WHO LIVE RURALLY IN A SMALL COUNTRY TOWN TO HAVE EQUAL ACCESS TO HIGH QUALITY ALLIED HEALTH SERVICES, (WHICH INCLUDES EASE OF ACCESS) AS PEOPLE WHO LIVE IN METROPOLITAN MELBOURNE.”

-  NAOMI

Allied Therapy Services is unique in that it is not a discipline specific therapy business. Why did you create an allied (team-based) therapy service and how do you think that benefits the clients Allied Therapy Services serves?

Providing a team-based approach to therapy is best practice in the current research. When therapists work together as a team, collaborating on the client’s goals and regularly communicating progress with the client and amongst one another, the client is able to achieve better and more timely outcomes. It also benefits people working with us that they don’t have to communicate with multiple different therapists, they can communicate with one main team member who will keep everyone updated. This saves time and money within a client’s plan and in our experience ultimately generates better outcomes for the client.

You have a policy that all of your therapists must have a minimum number of years of experience and be highly skilled in their field. What was the reason behind that policy?

Service quality really! Therapists who have been working for longer, have more clinical experience and therefore provide a better service for our clients. We’re very lucky that these are the type of people attracted to working with us and who tend to stay with us, meaning our clients benefit from working with therapists experienced in the area where they’re working, along with working the benefit of working with the same person until they achieve their goals.

And lastly what is the vision going forward for Allied Therapy Services, as it expands and strives to meet the growing demands within the community?

Just continue to get better! How this looks – as above it will continually evolve, but currently it means continuing to engage the absolute best therapists Vic have to offer, continually reviewing our service quality and ensuring our therapists are up to date with the best and latest practices available, supported by our expert Clinical Lead team. I also want every single person who has any contact with our service to have a really good experience, knowing the calibre of people we have working with us! (You may be picking up I feel very privileged to have the therapists we do working with us)!

Thank you Naomi for providing your overview and vision of Allied Therapy Services and we wish you the best of luck with baby number 4!