Meet & Greet guide

The Meet & Greet is a short 30-60 minute initial meeting between allied health assistant and person seeking assistance (and their family). Its purpose is for each attendee to learn more about the other and come to an agreement about if and how to work together moving forward.

During a Meet & Greet, no therapy related work takes place. As such, the Meet & Greet is not charged to the client, and the therapy assistant is not remunerated.

All other sessions that commence after the Meet & Greet are paid sessions.

Before conducting each in-person session at a client’s home, allied health assistants are required to conduct a pre-therapy screen. This can be a 5-minute phone call, an sms or email to answer some safety questions before proceeding with the session.

As a reminder, for those with COVID-19 exposure, please see the COVID-19 Test and Isolate National Protocols.

The pre-therapy phone screen is as follows: In the last 7 days, have you or anybody within the household:

• Tested positive or presumptively positive for COVID-19 or been identified as a potential carrier of the COVID-19 virus or similar communicable illness?
• Experienced any symptoms commonly associated with Covid-19 (such as cough, fever, difficulty breathing, muscle aches and pains or general exhaustion)?
• Been in direct contact with or in the immediate vicinity of any person who then knew and/or now is known to be infected with COVID-19 or has been identified as a potential carrier of COVID-19?
• Finished their isolation period in response to testing positive or being a close contact for COVID-19?

We then invite the client or the client’s parent/guardian to ask the same questions back to the allied health assistant.

If either party answers YES to any of the above questions, the in-person therapy session SHOULD NOT go ahead, and alternative arrangements such as telehealth should proceed where appropriate.

Either the client or client’s parent/guardian or allied health assistant has the right to decline in-person sessions at any time. If these instructions require clarification please contact Fora.

During the Meet & Greet please go through the following:

For the client (the person seeking assistance):

• What goals are you hoping to work towards?
• Do you have short-term goals (next 6 months)?
• Do you have long-term goals (years)?
• Where will sessions take place? In the home? In the community?
• Do you have any planned holidays?
• Will you be moving suburbs any time soon?

For the allied health assistant:

• Along with therapy implementation, will you take on any extra tasks, like cooking and preparing meals, driving and transport and community engagement?
• Will there be any personal care needs to attend to during the session? (For example, dressing, toileting etc.)
• If working with a child, are you eventually expected to work on your own without supervision from a parent? Do you feel comfortable doing so? (The expectation from Fora is that unsupervised sessions can’t occur until a few sessions have taken place and rapport between therapy assistant and client has been established)
• What are the days and times that you are available to assist? Will this change in the future or during holiday periods?
• Will you be changing courses or universities?
• How often does your university timetable change?
• Do you have placements this semester or next semester? If so, what is the time commitment (e.g. 5 days a week for 5 weeks). If yes, can temporary shifts on the evenings or weekends be arranged?

Connecting with the allied health professional

• Is it likely a Team Meeting with the allied health professional will be able to be organised soon? (For details about the Team Meeting, see the below section ‘After The Meet & Greet’)

Email info@foratherapy.com to let us know how it went!

Fora will be in contact with both parties separately to confirm if they would like to proceed.

If both parties wish to proceed:

The next step is to organise a Team Meeting (For details, see below.)

If either party doesn’t want to proceed:

This is fine too! We will rematch the person seeking assistance with a new allied health assistant or put the match on hold depending on the person seeking assistance’s preference.

We may ask you privately for feedback regarding why you didn’t wish to proceed to help us make better matches in the future.

What is a Team Meeting? (Check out the Team Meeting Guide)

Short summary of the Team Meeting:

• What? The team meeting is a paid meeting between the client, the client’s allied health professional (AHP) and the new allied health assistant. It’s a meeting for the AHP to identify tasks suitable for the allied health assistant and to make sure everybody is aligned on the work that will be occurring.
• Why? The allied health assistant is required to fill out a Team Meeting Form, which details any tasks delegated to them.
• How? The Therapy Assistant should contact the client/ client’s family to request a time to have the Team Meeting.
• Attendees: Ideally, Therapy assistant + AHP + Client/ Client’s Family. Or at least, TA + AHP.
• Format: Ideally in-person, or via Zoom or phone call.
• Having trouble? If this doesn’t work out due to availability mismatches, please let us know and we can organise a meeting via telehealth, phone or email.