David Ling joined representatives of a number of Rotary and other service organisations at a thank you luncheon provided by the University of Melbourne on Wednesday the 22nd November.
The Collaborative practice paediatric screening program has been operating since 1980 and our Club has been participating for most of those years.
The report on the day told us that more than 2000 students have benefitted from these sessions and that means that many many children have received free tests.
At Greensborough, we added vision testing with the help of Leverett & Kindler Optometrists, Mark Leverett being a member and Past President of our Club from 1984 to 2014, however in 2021 the University added this component to the programme making scheduling much easier for us and providing an additional dimension for the students doing the screening working in Interprofessional pairs
.
In 2022 the Physiotherapy Department added ball skills to the event.
Over our years of involvement there have been many hearing and vision deficiencies detected and this has provided an important service for kinder and pre-school aged children.
We have an extensive database of local Kindergartens and Preschools and are able to use TryBookings for scheduling.
At Wednesday's event we heard from two students sharing about the value of the programme from their perspective and we had a discussion session about balancing the needs of children in the community, the learning needs of students, and goals of partner clubs like ours.
Overall it was a great day celebrating a great programme of collaborative work in the Community.