Sarah and Early Start transcript

Sarah Pollard: My name is Sarah Pollard. I'm 25 years old, and I live in Southern Cross. It is peaceful and quiet here. There are lots of animals around. It takes about four to five hours to get to therapy. I've been coming to Early Start for about two years.

Tayla: Sarah is a lovely, bubbly young lady, and I've worked with her for a number of years. Sarah comes to Early Start Australia every fortnight, and she drives all the way from Southern Cross with her mum. Early Start Australia delivers services through occupational therapy, speech pathology, psychology all throughout Australia.

I work with people of a range of ages, from toddlers through to young adults, and I work with people with a range of disabilities and developmental delays. When Sarah comes in for her sessions, we'll often do something that's related to her interests, and so that might be doing something to do with art and getting her to explain to me how to draw something or paint something in a particular way. We've also worked on going out into the community, going shopping, getting to cafes, ordering things, all the things that we would do every day, so building those independence around those tasks.

Sarah Pollard: I enjoy coming to therapy, and I like to hang out with my speech therapist. We have a conversation of what we did over the weekend, play games, or we can have a coffee.

Tayla: From developing a really strong friendship and rapport with Sarah, it's helped with motivation within therapy, particularly because we work on goals and things that she wants to work on. It's a very person-centred approach.

Sarah Pollard: My biggest dream in the world is to become an author. I am an author of Bush Tales series, and I'm going to have a next book out called The Bush Tale of Miss Hen.