Assessments

The first consult is a 3 hour assessment.

This involves:

* a full medical history including drugs and vaccinations
* a history of any traumatic events
* a dietary history as well as any food allergies or food reactions
* an assessment of the areas that the child is delayed in such as developmental
   reflexes
* an Educational assessments if the child experiences difficulties with school
   subjects such as reading, writing, spelling or mathematics

Educational assessments

To establish exactly why and where a child encounters a difficulty in reading, writing, spelling or maths, I use the following tests:

* Neale Analysis of Reading Ability (Revised edition) for beginning reading
   ability through to year 7
* KeyMath (revised) for all aspects of Mathematics
* The Lindamood Auditory Conceptualisation Test to assess hearing and
   spelling ability
 * The Woodcock Reading Mastery Test (Revised edition) for all aspects of Reading

Since I do not believe in labeling people, much less children, I do not hand out reports. I only write down the test results for my own references, so that I can determine the best place to start and to be able to monitor progress.

If the child is too young for an Educational assessments, or if the child shows poor motor coordination, I will test whether and to what extend the developmental reflexes are integrated because all learning processes are dependent on whether the previous developmental milestones have been achieved. For example if the child suffered from ear infections whilst the developmental window for developing auditory discrimination and processing skills where open, these skills cannot be mastered. As a result the child may not be able to develop the skills required for spelling and sounding out words when reading (decoding) (see How to improve learning?).

Consultations

After the assessment, I often start with a block of 12 hours of consultations to improve:

* brain and sensory integration
* basic neural organization
* diet to improve the intake of nutrients that are necessary for learning and brain development
* nutritional deficiencies (see Nutrition information booklet)
* gut function to optimise digestion and absorption (see Health information booklet) 
* SureReading programme to optimise reading, writing and spelling

To achieve this I use a variety of modalities, such as:

* Brain Gym®
* (Educational) Kinesiology
* Homoeopathy
* Neuro-Organisation Technique (NOT)
* Nutrition Medicine
* Herbal Medicine
* Superlearning (Suggestopaedia)
* Neuro-Linguistic programming (NLP)
* Australian Bush Flower essences.

You can read more about these modalities by clicking on the links provided (in purple).

The 12 hours can be taken in any combination, ie 6 x 2 or 8 x 1 1/2 hour consults. After these 12 hours, the problem may be fixed or there are some issues left, in which case every subsequent consultation will be aimed at fine-tuning the system by addressing these issues.

Fees

The cost for the initial 3 hour assessment for babies and children is AUD$595. After the 3 hour assessment you have qualified for the discounted rate of AUD$175 per hour. A half hour appointment is AUS$95. There are special fees for children and adults who have a Health Care card and even more reduced fees for people who have a pensioners or single parent concession card. Rebates are available from most Private health funds depending on the individual's package with that health fund. Provider numbers are available upon request.

How to make an appointment?

If you live in Australia and you would like to make an appointment to see Drs. Anke Koelman for an assessment or consultation, please click here.

If you would like ask Drs. Koelman a question via Email or if you would like to make an appointment for a telephone or internet consultation, please click here.

If you would like to make an appointment by telephone, please phone the Optimum Learning & Health Centre on 08-83794755.