Our story begins with Nadia Cusack’s own journey of hope, which she embarked on after her son was born with Down Syndrome in 2009. As an Occupational Therapist, Nadia had good insight into the type of treatment that would best support Seth, but when seeking this treatment, she noticed that there were very few multi-disciplinary practices that offered the integrative paediatric treatment that Seth needed. Thus, Nadia embarked on a journey to ensure that other parents would not find this gap when seeking treatment for their children. Hope Studio opened its doors in 2009 and has been offering integrative treatment for eleven years.

Children and families can have access to Occupational Therapy, Physiotherapy, Speech Therapy, Psychology and Dietetics all at the same premises. In addition to this, all the treating therapists work closely with each other to ensure that each child receives integrated care, which we have found to be immensely beneficial for all of our clients.

To achieve this integrative care we ensure that all of our therapists understand the treatment that is offered in all other disciplines as well as understanding how to best support and integrate the different therapy approaches. We can then have a more holistic understanding of each individual client and their specific needs. It also ensures that children are quickly and appropriately referred for the most suitable intervention, with the aim of ensuring that each child is treated by the most appropriate practitioner in the most effective way. We pride ourselves on keeping up with the latest evidence based practice, new approaches and treatment modalities through regular training and course attendance in order to provide a high standard of care.

We purposefully chose to convert a home into the main practice space we use today, as our vision was to give children and families a warm, nurturing and safe treatment environment. We also aim to make therapy accessible to parents and for this reason have a number of different venues and service a variety of mainstream, assisted learning and special needs schools as well as hospitals. Our team believes firmly in helping those less fortunate than ourselves and we offer discounted/pro bono therapy to underprivileged children from disadvantaged backgrounds. Upskilling of parents and teachers in order to ensure carry-over of skills and holistic management of a child is imperative and for this reason we host presentations and workshops on a regular basis.

As mentioned above each discipline will be sharing information and titbits with you in future publications and we hope you enjoy them! Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any queries regarding the content. In our next post we will be discussing the impact of backpacks and spine development – stay tuned for more!

Kind Regards,

Nadia, Robyn, Eleanor, Ashley, Jennifer, Maranel and
The Hope Studio Therapy Team