Coastwide Therapy Services

Coastwide Therapy Services Occupational Therapy for children & young adults. Clinics at - Killarney Vale, Wyoming, Toukley. School/ preschool/ home/ community & day program visits.

Workshops for parents, carers & educators. We have 4 clinics across the Central Coast - Woy Woy, Toukley, Killarney Vale and Wyoming..... and also offer home, preschool and school visits. The OT team is headed up by Bec Penfold (occupational therapist) who has spent more than 20 years working with clients with physical and intellectual disabilities, Autism, Down Syndrome, Cerebral Palsy, ADHD, men

tal health and behavioural problems. We have a large team of OT’s and therapy assistants that work across the coast. OT Services offered include assessments and interventions to address the following concerns:
- Sensory Processing
- Pre writing development
- Handwriting
- Living Skills Assessments
- Specialised seating
- Visual Perceptual skills
- Assessment for vehicle modifications
- Fine motor/Gross motor skill development.
- Self-Care Skills
- Equipment Prescription
- Complex seating and positioning

We also run a series of workshops throughout the year
- An introduction to Sensory Processing
- Sleep - and its impact on behaviour and function
- Lets talk toileting- toilet training.
- Fussy feeders
- School Readiness
- The power of play

Services can be provided under:

• NDIS (National Disability Insurance (Registered Provider)
• CDM/ EPC plan (chronic disease management/ Enhanced Primary Care)
• Private Health Insurance
• Client funded

For more information, phone 43 881110, email [email protected] or go to our website www.coastwidetherapy.com.au.

Apparently we turned 15 yesterday. And I forgot. It wasn’t until today that I stopped and actually thought about what 15...
08/09/2026

Apparently we turned 15 yesterday. And I forgot.

It wasn’t until today that I stopped and actually thought about what 15 years of Coastwide means. And then I made this post... which took approximately 15 years in itself.

Looking back over just the last 12 months made me incredibly proud… and, if I’m truthful, a little emotional.

This has been one of the hardest years I can remember in our sector. There is so much uncertainty, so much change and so many families and therapists wondering what comes next.

But amongst all of that, we kept doing what Coastwide has always done.
We kept showing up.
We kept learning.
We kept asking questions.
We kept finding the gaps.
And when we saw something our community needed, we tried to work out how we could help collaboratively.
Somewhere along the way, this little OT business became something much bigger than I ever imagined 15 years ago. But the thing I am most proud of isn’t a project, a workshop, a conference, a research collaboration or even the approximately 47 billion NDIS reports we’ve written.

It’s the people.

The beautiful humans who make up Coastwide, who genuinely care about the people we support and about each other. Who roll with my ideas, keep learning, challenge thinking, share what they know and are always willing to do things differently when differently is what’s needed.

And the families, educators, support workers, organisations and communities who continue to trust us, believe in what we do and who invite us in.

15 years in business is actually a pretty bloody big deal.
So perhaps we should have had cake after all. ❤️
Happy birthday, Coastwide.
Still curious. Still learning. Still changing. Still passionate.
And definitely still terrible at remembering our own birthday.

I was reflecting on last week and realised it was one of those weeks that really captured just how broad occupational th...
06/09/2026

I was reflecting on last week and realised it was one of those weeks that really captured just how broad occupational therapy can be.

No two days looked remotely the same.

And 26 years into being an OT, I think that’s one of the things I still love most about this profession.

Over the years, I’ve been incredibly lucky to work in lots of different places, with lots of different people, across some pretty unique settings. And now I get to share some of that experience with our therapists, educators, families, other health professionals and services we work alongside.

I don’t ever want this work to feel boring or mundane.

I want us to keep learning and asking questions. To learn from other professions and from each other. For good, formal supervision to be a given - not something you have to request. To recognise what we don’t know, and to work collaboratively with the people around us.

And to keep finding better ways to support some of the most vulnerable people in our communities.

Last week just happened to capture all of that in five very different days. We have some exciting things ahead as a team and that always makes me proud.

Still learning. Still curious. Still very glad I chose OT all those years ago. ❤️

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this study. Not just because of the 89%.But because these young people didn’t...
03/09/2026

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this study. Not just because of the 89%.

But because these young people didn’t suddenly develop difficulties with language, learning, attention, memory and executive functioning when they entered Youth Justice. They were kids first. Kids sitting in classrooms, trying to learn.

We talk a lot about early intervention in terms of therapy - OT, speech pathology, psychology. And access to those supports is essential. Supporting educators should never replace children having access to the therapy and specialist assessment they need.

It should sit alongside it.

When therapists and educators work together, what we know about a child’s language, learning, executive functioning and regulation can translate into the place where they spend so much of their day... school.

Teachers are already supporting increasingly complex needs. Reducing access to therapy and expecting educators to absorb that need is not the answer. Educators aren’t therapists or diagnosticians - and nor should they be.

But those of us working in these spaces can do better at working alongside them and putting what we know into their hands.

Helping educators understand why a child can talk well and still not understand an instruction. Why “I dunno” doesn’t always mean “I don’t care.” Why knowing a rule and using it in the moment are different things. And why sometimes we need to change the demand or environment, rather than increase the consequence.

This is why we’re so passionate about working alongside educators at Coastwide.

And it’s also why the conversation about reducing access to early intervention supports worries me.

Because reducing support doesn’t reduce need.

Kids still go to school. Educators still teach them. Families still support them.

And those needs don’t disappear as children get older.

The cost of early intervention is easy to measure.
The cost of not getting it right early is much harder to see. But we see it in our work supporting educators and young people in youth detention.

Maybe we need to look further downstream when we talk about what early support is WORTH.

Apparently we’re meant to tell you who we are on here sometimes, not just give you information. So… here you go. 😂Reason...
01/09/2026

Apparently we’re meant to tell you who we are on here sometimes, not just give you information.

So… here you go. 😂

Reasons to follow us. Or unfollow us….You decide.

Anything we missed, Coastwide team? 👀

Book Week can sometimes make it feel like we should all have kids happily sitting beside a huge bookshelf, absorbed in b...
29/08/2026

Book Week can sometimes make it feel like we should all have kids happily sitting beside a huge bookshelf, absorbed in books.
But reading isn’t everyone’s jam - and accessing stories looks different for everyone.

🎧 Borrow audiobooks free through your local library, using the Libby app. Listen in the car, while drawing, moving, doing jobs around the house or winding down at bedtime.

📖 Let someone else do the reading. Try library story time (usually includes a craft activity – win win!), or find someone reading a story aloud online.

👀 Read what they’re into. Comics, graphic novels, magazines, fact books, gaming guides - even catalogues. Not every reader wants a novel. Interest is a pretty good way in.

📱 If print itself is the barrier, technology can help. Tools such as Speechify App, C-Pens and built-in text-to-speech features can make written information so much more accessible.

🎲 Or make up the story. Story cubes, picture cards, photos, drawing and make-believe all give kids opportunities to create, sequence and tell stories. Sometimes telling stories comes before reading them.

🎶 For younger children, options such as Yoto and Toniebox can give children another way to independently choose and enjoy stories and audio… but they are an outlay.

Learning to decode written words is an important literacy skill. But stories also give us language, imagination, information, ideas, connection and enjoyment.

Difficulty reading print shouldn’t mean missing out on all of that.

So…don’t beat yourself up over the costume OR not having the book in print… just remember there are loads of alternatives to traditional reading. You can read it, listen to it, scan it, make it up, move while you listen, let someone else read it or share the story together.

However your family does stories… it counts.

BOOKS WE THINK ARE WORTH TALKING ABOUT She Is Not Your Rehab by Matt Brown, with Sarah Brown, is absolutely worth a read...
17/08/2026

BOOKS WE THINK ARE WORTH TALKING ABOUT

She Is Not Your Rehab by Matt Brown, with Sarah Brown, is absolutely worth a read… or a listen. (Matt’s voice is very soothing, by the way.)

It’s raw, vulnerable and at times uncomfortable. Matt shares his own experiences of childhood trauma alongside a much bigger conversation about masculinity, violence, relationships, accountability and breaking intergenerational cycles.

One idea we kept coming back to…Understanding why someone behaves the way they do doesn’t mean excusing the harm they cause.

Both things can be true…. We can have enormous compassion for what someone has experienced, while recognising that healing also involves taking responsibility for how our pain affects the people around us.

That feels super important in the work we do with children and families. Trauma doesn’t always stay neatly in the past. It can show up in relationships, parenting and behaviour... and children are watching and learning what love, conflict, safety and relationships look like.

Breaking those cycles matters.

We also love that Matt and Sarah’s work didn’t stop with the book. She Is Not Your Rehab has grown into a global anti-violence movement, and innerBoy is a free trauma-informed program supporting men in Australia and New Zealand to begin doing some of this work.

If there’s one thing we took from this book, it’s probably this:
What happened to you matters.
What you do with it matters too.

Healing isn’t easy. Breaking cycles isn’t easy…But cycles can be broken. 𝐒𝐡𝐞 𝐈𝐬 𝐍𝐨𝐭 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐑𝐞𝐡𝐚𝐛™ — Matt Brown with Sarah Brown… it’s ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ from us.

This one might ruffle a few feathers. But we’re hearing it far too often not to talk about it.Increasingly, we’re meetin...
13/08/2026

This one might ruffle a few feathers. But we’re hearing it far too often not to talk about it.

Increasingly, we’re meeting families who don’t actually know the profession or qualification of the person providing support to their child or young person.

We will hear things like…“Well - they look like an OT, they do a little bit speech and are kinda like a physio – but I’m not sure.”

No.

You might work collaboratively across those areas. You might support recommendations made by those professionals. You might have fantastic knowledge and experience.

But professional qualifications, roles and scopes of practice mean something.

We can learn from each other. Work across overlapping areas. Read the research, attend the training and understand the strategies. That doesn’t make us another profession.

This isn’t about one profession being more valuable than another. There are brilliant key workers, educators, therapists, support workers and other professionals doing incredibly valuable work… who we collaborate with on the daily.

This is about transparency and informed choice. Families navigating disability services already have a huge, complicated system to understand. They shouldn’t have to decipher someone’s qualifications as well.

And as professionals, we have a responsibility to understand our own scope, explain it clearly, collaborate well and recognise when another professional’s expertise is needed.

So if you’re a parent or carer and you’re not quite sure, ask:

What is your qualification?
What is your role with my child?
What are you working on and why?
How will I know if it’s helping?

A good professional should be able to answer those questions clearly.

You deserve to know who is supporting your child, what their role is, and why they’re there.

Some days, parenting is beautifully organised lunches, clean washing and wholesome family outings.And some days it’s cer...
10/08/2026

Some days, parenting is beautifully organised lunches, clean washing and wholesome family outings.

And some days it’s cereal for dinner, the favourite show on repeat and deciding that everyone is actually better off staying home. ❤️

There can be so much pressure around what parenting is supposed to look like… particularly when our feeds on here are full of other people’s family outings, fancy lunchboxes, organised homes, prepped craft activities and seemingly calm children.

But we’re comparing our whole day… the tired bits, messy bits, hard bits and everything nobody photographs - with somebody else’s highlight reel.

Parenting doesn’t require getting everything right.

Sometimes lowering the demands is the supportive choice.

Sometimes cancelling the plan protects everyone’s capacity.

Sometimes the screen helps a tired nervous system reset.

Sometimes the washing can absolutely wait until tomorrow.

And sometimes asking for help is the thing that keeps the whole family going.

There isn’t one right way for a family to get through a hard day.

You know your child. You know your family. And your family life doesn’t need to look like anybody else’s.

You’re allowed to do what YOUR family needs… and that includes what YOU need.

A huge congratulations to our OT, Becy, whose research has been published in the Australian Occupational Therapy Journal...
06/08/2026

A huge congratulations to our OT, Becy, whose research has been published in the Australian Occupational Therapy Journal.

Originally completed as part of her Honours degree at the University of Newcastle, Becy’s peer-reviewed scoping review explores trauma-informed and sensory-based practices in early childhood settings.

At Coastwide, we’re passionate about providing evidence-informed care, so seeing one of our own contribute to the growing evidence base for occupational therapy is something we’re super proud of.

Becy’s review highlights the importance of looking beyond behaviours and considering the whole child -their sensory experiences, relationships and participation in everyday life. It also identifies opportunities for occupational therapists to continue strengthening the evidence around trauma-informed and sensory-based practice in early childhood.

Research helps shape better questions, better understanding and, ultimately, better outcomes for children and families.
Congratulations, Becy. Thank you for your curiosity, your commitment to learning and your contribution to our profession. We’re so lucky to have you on the Coastwide team.

📖 Article: Trauma-informed and sensory-based practices in preschool settings: A scoping review
🔗 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12099027/

Sometimes the biggest shift doesn’t happen in our child - it happens in the way we see them.💛 One day, you catch yoursel...
30/07/2026

Sometimes the biggest shift doesn’t happen in our child - it happens in the way we see them.
💛 One day, you catch yourself pausing before reacting.
💛 You become more curious than frustrated.
💛 You stop asking, “How do I stop this behaviour?” and start wondering, “What might they need right now?”
That doesn’t mean the hard moments disappear.
It doesn’t mean you’ve got it all figured out.
But it does change the way you move through those moments together.
At Coastwide, we believe behaviour is communication, relationships come before strategies, and children do well when they can. Sometimes the most powerful thing we can do is shift from trying to manage behaviour to trying to understand it.

Address

1/13 Robertson Road
Bateau Bay, NSW
2261

Opening Hours

Monday 8:30am - 5pm
Tuesday 8:30am - 5pm
Wednesday 8:30am - 5pm
Thursday 8:30am - 5pm
Friday 8:30am - 5pm

Telephone

+61243881110

Website

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