"Lack of support"

My child was being seen by the Geraldton Regional paediatric feeding team for a few years.

In the first year, I believe my child was misdiagnosed for severe allergies, despite seeing the dietician every week for months. The dietician wrote unprofessional emails in my opinion and reassured us that information was being passed on to our Gastro team in Perth which I believe, it wasn't. So Perth thought everything was going fine until a Telehealth appointment. During this appointment, the Gastroenterologist directed us to come to Perth the next day. We stayed in Perth for a month working through my child's allergies and medical needs.

We have been back and forth to Perth and still continued working with the feeding team. At one stage my child was pocketing food in their cheek and the speech therapist told me we need to device something small and narrow to put in my child's mouth to stop them pushing food into their cheek, which I felt would be a choking hazard.

After not hearing from anyone in the feeding team for 6 months I contacted them again and we had two appointments with the occupational therapist. They did offer to write a support feeding program to give to a private occupational therapist in Geraldton that could support us for just over a hundred dollars an hour. They were very supportive and encouraging and I felt this was the first time we had felt like this since dealing with this team. 

We were asked to attend group feeding therapy sessions this term but unfortunately, it was my work day and we couldn't attend. I asked what other sessions or appointment times we could have to assist my child, the reply was that, unfortunately, because they are offering the early years food therapy group, they aren't able to offer one to one regular services this term for food therapy.

After being a patient with the feeding team for a few years it was very disappointing to receive such a response. It was like my child was too hard for them to deal with - I feel I wouldn't recommend this team to anyone who has a young child with feeding issues.