Optimal Speech Pathology

25/12/2025

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to our clients, families and our colleagues - wishing you a joyful and peaceful time!

19/12/2025

One of the highlights of our year has been the introduction of Swallowing Technologies’ BiSSkApp. This home based Dysphagia rehabilitation program is literally changing lives - and right in time for a sip of non thickened fluid at Xmas! Congrats to Glenn, his family and our brilliant Giordana for leading the way!

19/12/2025

Celebrating the wins with messages like this from our clients. ‘I wanted to share because it feels like I’m me!’ Just a few months after brain injury and our client finishes the year by building (ie from scratch!) a bunk for three! The planning involved in milling and preparing the timber, measuring, drawing the design, managing fatigue - what a mighty effort. And this image is just for reference - his final product is much prettier!!

11/12/2025

This is worth a second post!! Great Xmas stocking filler idea. The very talented Steve Jobson from our Born Intent Speak Out Therapy Group has come up with a great Xmas gift. His superb artwork along with tips for living well with PD - all for only $30 (or more as a donation if you like). Please see an image of the front page attached – these calendars are A3 and are truly beautiful.
In the image you will see the QR code, which is using Stripe, so if you were to scan that to your camera on your phone, you would be able to see that you can pay through Apple Pay or you can pay through any credit card. Stripe will capture your payment in Steve’s SAJART account , and itemise your name and confirmed donation. 100% of your donation will be going through to Shake It Up foundation which is focused on Australian based medical research into Parkinson's.
This is a gift that really is a win for everyone

11/12/2025

‘BEYOND VOICE': Cognitive Communication. Steve takes us into the Last Wilderness’

One of the areas of communication commonly overlooked for people with Parkinson’s is the importance of being able to tell a story, recall a joke - or even give a formal presentation. At Optimal SP we encourage our clients to take on big challenges - and this year in our ‘Spotlight’ series we nominated a group member to each lead a Speak Out Therapy Group Session - including giving a formal presentation on a topic of their selection. Steve Jobson, from our Born Intent Group rose to the occasion by taking us into the last wilderness - Antarctica. Not only did Steve transport us with a brilliant multimedia presentation - he captivated us with his commanding voice and vivid descriptions. Prior to the presentation. Steve conceded he had probably over prepared the material to alleviate nerves and potential blanks in the knowledge, but afterwards he recognised it as a ‘good’ kind of apprehension as the preparation helped with a confident delivery and a sense of achievement and excitement in completing the challenge.

Steve’s taken his passion for travel and PD advocacy one step further by setting up his online gallery to raise money for Shake It Up – you can find his gallery here and his wonderful penguins can be glimpsed in this post! https://www.sajart.net

Alongside his presentation, Steve has also created a calendar featuring his artwork to support a Parkinson’s charity. Donations can be made via the QR code, and those interested in ordering a calendar can contact Steve directly through his website.

11/12/2025

Learn a little more about Christina -
In this video, she shares a bit about who she is, what brought her here, and the passion she brings to our community.

Learn a bit about Christina and her journey within Speech Pathology

11/12/2025

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCrchSc3puI

Meet Christina, our new Director at Optimal Speech Pathology.
With a deep commitment to service, advocacy, and innovative neurorehabilitation, Christina is leading OSP into an exciting new chapter. In this interview series, she shares her vision, her values, and the future she sees for our team and community.
We can’t wait for you to get to know her story.

Here Christina talks about her goals while she takes on this new leadership role.

09/12/2025

Seventeen years ago I met the brilliant Sally Pittendrigh. Today Sally moves on from our team as our longest serving practitioner. Sally has been a vital part of our private hospital work, our Head &Neck service and a founding member of the Macquarie MND Team. She is unflappable - Sally takes the most complex caseloads and brings her unique skills, warmth and care to families in crisis. The smile in these pics is real. Sally is one of life’s true givers - she is universally loved by clients and colleagues. On a personal level Sally has also been my confidante and wise counsel and my giggling partner! Sending heartfelt gratitude and very best wishes for the future Sally! ###

05/12/2025

04/12/2025

Whew! What a week for Optimal Speech Pathology and we're not stopping!! A couple of weeks ago we launched our BEYOND VOICE initiative for Parkinson's - for more info, you can check it our here on a snazzy new website: https://www.optimalsp.com.au/parkinsons

One part of our BEYOND VOICE toolkit has involved adopting the incredible Plasticise app to support home programming. See this wonderful client story below:

‘One of the many things people with Parkinson’s work on in speech therapy is their facial expression. Research is suggesting that one of the best ways to address this movement is in conjunction with speech - and one of our OSP clients has taken this one step further this month by using Plasticise. This brilliant home-exercise app allows the user to watch recordings of their own ‘best’ performance and try to emulate this in their own practice at home. And the best part - when this client joins his weekly speak out therapy group we all get to see his face on the move!’

Thank you to the amazing team at Plasticise for introducing this wonderful new app to our team at Optimal Speech Pathology.

03/12/2025

03/12/2025

Innovation and Advocacy - two areas in which Colleen has truly been a trailblazer. We can’t wait to carry this forward!