Services

Neuropsychology Assessment

This is a expert assessment that involves an interview and a range of tasks designed to assess a person’s strengths and weaknesses in speed of thinking, attention, memory, new learning, planning, reasoning and problem solving.

Some reasons you might want such an assessment are to:

• to understand a person’s current strengths and weaknesses and ways to support the person at home, in the community or to help with work, school or study
• inform a behaviour support plan (by enabling us to make reasonable assessments of what a person is capable of)
• help determine someone’s capacity to make reasoned informed decisions (such as decisions about their accommodation, health or spending).
• diagnose the presence, type or severity of brain injury
• how factors other than brain injury (e.g. mood, fatigue, medications) might be impacting on thinking and memory functioning

Diverge assessors have each conducted hundreds of assessments. They are highly experienced with complicated diagnostic issues and provision of plain language, practical advice for follow up intervention.

Behaviour Assessment & Support

Behaviour Assessment

Functional behaviour assessments are a specialist evaluation of a client’s behaviour that aims to identify where, when and the likely reasons why challenging behaviours occur. Consideration is given to the client’s environment, level of disability or cognitive impairment, and personal factors that may influence behaviour.

These assessments assist the individuals and teams to understand what is working well, and what is not, and will provide advice and recommendations regarding how a situation might be altered to get a positive outcome.

We typically do this working with individuals and teams in the client’s environment, rather than an office, and use specialised tools such as the Overt Behaviour Scale (OBS). High quality behaviour assessments are critical for confident behaviour management interventions and good outcomes. Diverge staff qualifications, competence, and experience enable high-quality assessments.

Behaviour support interventions

Behaviour support involves working directly with clients, carers, support staff, and family members in order to manage behaviours. With an aim to:

• to decrease the impact of client’s difficult behaviours
• promote more positive behaviours
• Provide a plain language behaviour support plan with a focus on positive behaviour support (PBS)

Interventions are conducted in the environment where the support is needed (e.g., community settings, family home) and can include:

• Direct client support
• Family and education support
• Staff training (specifically related to individual client),
• Team meetings
• Ongoing review

Counselling

Counselling with the client aims to change thinking and behaviour, to give them skills to manage things such as stress, anger, low mood, anxiety or pain.

Clients and their families may also benefit from counselling to discuss frustration and adjustment, as well as strategies to manage complex life situations or changes in their memory, concentration and thinking.
Approaches include:

• Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT)
• Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)
• Motivational Interviewing (MI)
• Mindfulness
• Fatigue management

Paediatrics

Diverge also offers a comprehensive range of services to children, adolescents and young adults, including:

• neuropsychological assessment
• behaviour support
• family support
• school liaison

We take an individualized approach that reflects the fact that no two injuries are the same. We work closely with kids and their “everyday people” – parents, friends, teachers. We work with these people at home, at school or in the community depending on what is needed.

We understand that young people’s needs change over time depending on age, stage, and time post-injury. We provide support to kids and their families during major life transitions including:

• returning to school after an injury
• starting primary school
• moving from primary to secondary school
• adolescence
• tackling VCE or VCAL
• starting or returning to tertiary studies

Making a referral to the Diverge Paediatric service is done in the same way as making a referral for an adult.

Consultation

Diverge provides a range of specialist consultation services. Our experienced staff understand disability services, health, justice and community services systems.

Secondary Consultation

We provide secondary consultation through out Victoria to support service providers working with complex cases and challenging situations. We provide consultation to case managers, planners, care teams, shared accommodation settings, mental health clinicians and teams, community services Multiple and Complex Needs Initiative (MACNI), and Government departments (e.g. DFFH, Corrections).

Our clinicians can assist with:

• Discussion regarding individual client cases
• Planning appropriate clinical approaches
• Advice regarding assessment and behaviour-management strategies
• Support, guidance, and training for care teams
• Advice regarding family-sensitive practice
• Information about referral pathways
• Helping to identify solutions and achieve positive results

Tertiary Consultation

Diverge provides tertiary consultation to various agencies regarding ABI and behaviour management, and tailoring service responses in complex cases.

This can involve:

• Advice regarding service protocols for specific client groups
• Measuring or monitoring change and success
• Developing skill sets among staff
• Linking into networks and navigating service systems
• Working across service silos
• Collaboration and uniting teams that work with complex clients

Over the past ten years, our team has provided tertiary consultation to case management agencies, hospitals, nursing homes, emergency services, Department of Justice, Victoria Police, the Victorian Coalition of ABI Service Providers Criminal Justice Network, and generic disability support services.

Community Work

Various community and service development projects have been undertaken or are ongoing at Diverge.

• A summary of these can be found here.