The Better Start for Children with Disability initiative provides funding for early intervention services for children under 7 with eligible disability.
Children are eligible for the Better Start program if diagnosed with one of the following disabilities:
- Cerebral palsy
- Deafblindness
- Down syndrome, including mosaic Down syndrome
- Fragile X syndrome with full mutation.
- Hearing impairment (threshold)
- Sight impairment (threshold)
- Prader-Willi syndrome
- Williams syndrome
- Angelman syndrome
- Kabuki syndrome
- Smith-Magenis syndrome
- CHARGE syndrome
- Cornelia de Lange syndrome
- Rett’s Disorder
- Cri du Chat syndrome; or
- Microcephaly (threshold)
Children registered with Better Start can access up to $12,000 (maximum $6,000 per year) to pay for early intervention services.
These services include:
- audiology
- occupational therapy
- orthoptics
- physiotherapy
- psychology and
- speech pathology
Families living in outer regional or remote areas may be eligible for an additional one-off payment of $2,000.
This payment is to assist with additional expenses associated with accessing services.
Registration and Information Pack
Moving Forward Workshop at Wollongong on the 8th of March 2016 10am-3pm.
The workshop will have speakers from Department of Education to talk about transition to schools, Ability/Early Links and hopefully somebody from Centrelink and other organisations.