Explore

Medically Fragile Children

Explore

About us

We are a specialist service committed to developing the potential of people who have disabilities, by working alongside the providers who support them.

Our transdisciplinary team specialises in behavioral support, clinical psychology, nurse consultancy, dual diagnosis (mental health), occupational therapy, physiotherapy and speech language therapy.

A major advantage of this unique approach is that it can identify issues not covered in the initial referral, ensuring more complete and appropriate care. Efforts to support people are coordinated so that there is less disruption in people’s lives. This is beneficial for clients, their families and providers. 

We are is a mobile team they are flexible and responsive and able to support providers wherever they are needed.

We work alongside support workers to enhance their knowledge and skills, to ensure that they can provide people with the best support possible.

The Explore philosophy

We support providers to support their clients.

We assess and then model the support that is needed.

We avoid dependency. Things need to work when we’re not there.

A measure of our success is the shortness of our engagement.

We seek to strengthen and support families.

We listen and respond to the client voice.

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Medically Fragile Children

This service unique to the Waikato supports families/whanau to promote quality of life, community participation and maximum independence for the child.

It is a short term (3 – 6 months) transitional respite service that helps families to achieve a balanced life incorporating the health needs of their medically fragile child.

Our service focuses initially on children who have been discharged from the neonatal intensive care unit and return home with complex health needs. Support workers are trained and work under the guidance of a registered nurse to provide assistance with such care as:

• oxygen therapy
  
• tube feeding
  
• suctioning
  
• some household management.

We offer a planned approach from hospital to home with the aim to reduce the number of crisis episodes and minimise family/whanau stress levels. Our goal is to increase the family/whanau’s confidence in caring for their medically fragile child and to enrich the growth and development of the child.

We support families to care for their child in their own home. We aim to reduce their feelings of isolation by building trusting and respectful relationships and providing a quality service.

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