Terms of Service

Our Terms of Service detail our rights and responsibilities as a service provider, and your rights and responsibilities as a customer. This document forms part of the agreement with Joyful Speech Pathology. Please make sure you have read, understood, and agree to this document before signing this document. Failure to meet your responsibilities may result in cancellation of services.

Rights and Responsibilities

What can you expect from Joyful Speech Pathology and what we ask of you.

We will:

·         Involve you in decisions about your life

·         Make sure you have the information you need

·         Ask for your feedback and work with your ideas

·         Keep a record of therapy and other supports we need

·         Make sure all therapists are qualified and attend regular training

·         Respect your privacy and protect your personal information

·         Work to always improve the quality of our services

You can:

·         Receive services when and where you need them

·         Stop receiving services when you like

·         Expect therapist to be respectful and considerate

·         Use a support person or an advocate if you want to

·         Ask to see your personal information and note(s)

·         Give us feedback at anytime

We ask you to:

·         Be respectful of your therapist and work together with them

·         Be respectful of Joyful Speech Pathology property  and resources

·         Share information about any health conditions you have

·         Let us know if you need to change or cancel appointments

·         Work with us to meet regulatory and best practice requirements

Please note: Our therapist might refer you to other service providers for support to achieve your goals. In these cases, Joyful Speech Pathology is not responsible for the quality of products or services provided.

Charges

We charge for the following activities:

·         All appointments with your therapist. If there is more than one therapist at an appointment, you will be charge for each therapist. We will discuss who attends appointments with you

·         Talking to you by phone, text messages, and email

·         Working with the people in your life to make sure therapy happens in everyday situations - this includes communicating with teachers, other health professionals, family members, etc. to discuss how to best support you via text message, email, or phone calls.

·         Travel to the locations where you want to receive therapy

·         Completing assessments, including safety assessments and reviews

·         Writing reports that show goal progress and outcomes, and recommendations for future therapy supports

·         Helping you with assistive technology

·         Creating resources that help you achieve your goals

·         Your therapy team working together to deliver therapy and help you achieve your goals

·         Writing notes after an appointment or phone call

·         Writing reports required by professional bodies as part of our duty of care

We don’t charge for the following activities:

·         Booking appointments with you

·         Completing invoices and payments

·         Therapist or students who attend appointments for learning purposes

·         Return trip after your appointment

Travel

Joyful Speech Pathology provides mobile speech pathology services. We provide therapy in the locations where you want to receive it. This can include your home, school, workplace, and community settings.

We charge for:

·         The time it takes therapist to travel to appointments from their regular place of work or the location of their last appointment.

Please note: Travel charges may defer depending on the time it takes for therapist to travel to your location. When possible, we book appointments with other customers in your area on the same day to reduce travel cost.

At this time, we only offer services in the north and north east suburbs of metropolitan Adelaide.

Cancellation

If you need to change or cancel your appointment, we ask that you provide two business days’ notice and let us know within regular business hours.  For example, if your appointment is at 9:30am on Monday, you need to let us know by 9am the Thursday before.

To cancel or change an appointment, please call, text or email at 0406233373 or joyfulspeechpathology@outlook.com during regular business hours.

If you missed an appointment, we will charge you the full cost including note taking time and travel. If you cancel within two business days, we will charge you the full cost for the face to face time only.

If you cancel often, we will discuss your therapy services and goals and what help you might need to attend appointments. If we can’t find a solution then we may decide to stop services until you are able to attend your appointments.

If your therapist needs to cancel an appointment, we will do our best to reschedule.

Duty of Care

Please note the following as part of our duty of care:

·         Children must be accompanied by an adult during the provision of services at the client’s home. The adult is responsible for the child and must stay with the child during the duration of the appointment.

·         Joyful Speech Pathology staff cannot administer medication

·         The health and safety of customers accessing therapy services at a facility that is not managed by Joyful Speech Pathology (e.g. school, childcare, community  location) is the responsibility of that facility. The facility is also responsible to share health and safety information with Joyful Speech Pathology staff so that any risks can be identified and managed.

Payments

Private paying, self/plan managed

If you choose to book an appointment through our website, you will be prompted to pay for the appointment in full. If you do not wish to pre-pay for your appointments, you can contact us and we can book an appointment for you. In this instance, an invoice will be sent to your nominated email address/plan manager after the appointment.

Payment is required within 7 days of the invoice date. Invoice will include information on how you can make payment.

If there are any issues with your invoice you have 3 days from the date of invoice to raise these issues with us.

We will send you a reminder if you have not paid your invoice by the due date. We have the right to stop services and refer your case to debt collection if payment is not received.

Feedback and Complaints

We want to know when things are going well and when there are issues.

You can give us feedback by:

·         Contacting your therapist in writing, by phone, or in person.

We will review your feedback and take necessary actions. We will contact you within a week to discuss your feedback and let you know of any actions taken.

If you would prefer to speak to someone outside of Joyful Speech Pathology, you can contact:

·         NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission phone 1800 035 544

·         ndiscommission.gov.au

If you need help to make a complaint you can use an advocate. This can be a family member, friend, support worker or another agency.

To find an advocacy agency near you, go to: askizzy.org.au/disability-advocacy-finder

Incident Management

We do everything we can to make sure you are safe and services are high quality.

If an incident occurs during service delivery or as a result of service delivery, we will:

·         Make sure you and everyone involved is safe

·         Involve the police and other agencies if required

·         Find out what caused the incident

·         Record details of the incident

·         Make changes to improve our service

·         Provide you with ongoing support and keep you updated on any actions we have taken

·         Contact the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission if it is a reportable incident

Service Continuity

Natural disasters, pandemic, and other circumstances outside of our control may impact on our ability to deliver services.

In these circumstances, we will do our best to continue therapy. Services can be provided online or over the phone via teletherapy, as an alternative to face to face appointments.

By working together, we can make sure there is as little disruption to your therapy as possible.