Business Interview: 5 minutes with Rowena Roweth

What exactly is Whole Child Specialists?
Whole Child Specialists is a psychological assessments and treatment service for children, adolescents and families in rural New South Wales. We offer assessments for children who may be presenting with symptoms of autism spectrum disorders, attention deficit disorder, learning difficulties or intellectual disabilities. We can then help families tailor a specific treatment for their child and we also offer treatment for kids with anxiety, depression, grief and loss, marital separations — a big range of things. We offer specialised, comprehensive, high quality and evidence-based treatment services and assessment services that no one else in Orange or nearby is able to provide.

What’s your role here at Whole Child Specialists?

I'm a clinical psychologist and working with children, adolescents and families has been my area of expertise and interest for the past 15 years.

 What other specialities are represented on staff?

We have staff here from a variety of different multi-disciplinary backgrounds from psychiatry to clinical psychology, and clinical social workers. We also partner up and work quite closely with other allied health service providers like occupational therapists and speech pathologists to try and offer families a holistic approach as required for their children.

What ages do you treat?
Generally, our clinic is for 0 to 18 years of age, but for neurodevelopmental disorders and intellectual disabilities we often do get referred adults as well.

Should people contact your service directly or do they need a referral from a GP?
We get people who come here directly and also others that are referred through GPs, paediatricians and a number of other services in town that we work quite closely with.

We are also registered through Medicare, through the NDIS and through Carers NSW to provide the services funding by their organisations.

But we welcome people just calling up and telling us a little bit about what's happening for their family and then we are able to talk them through the referral process, and if there is any funding they can apply for or what we might be able to offer them and their family.