Speech with Rhi and Friends

03/06/2026

Was a pleasure to be involved, looking forward to doing it again soon!

🤝 Collaboration in Action – Townsville Outreach 2026

A huge shout out to Speech with Rhi & Friends, Therapy & Stuff Occupational Therapy, and Community GRO for collaborating with me during our Townsville Outreach over the Easter weekend.

When like-minded professionals come together with a shared goal of supporting families, amazing things happen. It was an incredible opportunity to connect, collaborate, and provide meaningful support to families within our community.

Thank you to everyone involved for your passion, dedication, and commitment to making a difference—one family at a time. 💙

Together, we are building stronger supports, stronger communities, and brighter futures.

10/05/2026

A great joy of our days is building relationships with our families- and so often this is our Mum's. We laugh together, we cry together, we play together and we grow together. Being a parent is already hard, being the parent of a child with a visible or invisible difference adds a whole additional layer. Thank you to our mothers, our aunts, our godmothers, our sisters, our grandmothers, our step-mothers and our single parents. We see you, we celebrate you and we thank you everyday, but today especially ❤️✨
Happy Mother's Day

27/04/2026

As I head off on my final leg before coming home, I am reflecting on everything I've learned and the hopes for the future of research, society and clinical practice as shared by some of the more than 3000 people, from over 70 countries who attended INSAR this year.
I look forward to seeing you all soon ❤️✨

22/04/2026

Rhi is ending Autism Acceptance Month in Prague, Czech Republic at the INSAR Annual Meeting, a conference that brings together some of the most knowledgeable and active researchers in the autism community.
I'm proudly representing not just myself and my PhD but every single child we know, love and support.

07/04/2026

Rhi spent the long weekend up in Townsville with Ally from Ally Empowering NDIS Participants and Devi from Therapy and Stuff doing some outreach to communities that are in need of allied health support. Average waitlists in Townsville are 3 YEARS long!
We had such a great time meeting everyone and can't wait to come back again! Thanks for hosting us Ally, it was a blast! ❤️

21/02/2026

Yesterday evening we had the pleasure of hosting our very first "Friends in the Field" networking event for 2026! A fun evening of connections, putting faces to names and eating pizza! 🍕
We played some networking bingo and used some industry funny (or punny!) photo props!
Thank you to everyone who made the trip, from close (700m away!) to far away (Ally Empowering NDIS Participants came all the way from Townsville!)

07/02/2026

When systems step back, families don’t magically step up; they collapse. And calling that “thriving” is a dangerous lie.

Last week, the Thriving Kids program was announced.

The timing was confronting.

The announcement came the day after news broke of a Perth family who reportedly died in a murder–suicide, following significant reductions to their NDIS funding that left the family without essential supports.

These are not abstract policy discussions. They are real people, real families, and real consequences.

Programs like Thriving Kids are often framed as evidence of progress, but initiatives like this increasingly place responsibility back onto the very people who are already struggling most: parents.

Parents are expected to coordinate, deliver, and compensate for the withdrawal of formal supports, often while managing burnout, financial stress, and complex care needs with little acknowledgement of the limits of human capacity.

We personally know families who are already at breaking point- parents who are exhausted, overwhelmed, and in survival mode, saying out loud that they cannot keep going without adequate support. These are not uncaring parents. They are families who love their children deeply and have been left holding responsibilities that no one should be expected to carry alone.

How can we honestly say this is supporting our children to "thrive" when families are already at breaking point?

WARNING: Distressing content

02/02/2026

We're SUPER excited to be hosting Ally's visit in the middle of February! If you are in need of Support Coordination services please feel free to reach out to Ally or our team directly and we can help 🥰

29/01/2026

💥⬅️ 3/6

And then… straight back to the chaos 😅🌪️

The carpets were torn up, the giant fans came in, the air purifiers were running non-stop… and the clinic went from a safe, calm space for all to a delightfully aggressive test of every single sense 🫠😂

We’re so grateful to our families for being so patient and understanding while we worked through it all behind the scenes.
Just another reminder of how wonderful our community truly is ❤️✨

28/01/2026

💥⬅️ 2/6

In the midst of all the chaos, we still held our annual Speech with Rhi & Friends Christmas Party 🎄💛

It’s a highly requested and deeply loved celebration of the relationships we cherish, and the hard work our littlest (and biggest!) loves put into becoming their best selves ✨

We had so much food, so much fun… and of course a very special visit from Santa 🎅🎁

This is what it's all about- celebrating our beautiful community!