Emerald Primary School & Emerald Secondary College
Emerald Psychology Practice is proud to have a partnership with our local Primary and Secondary schools. We value supporting the mental health of our children within the school environment. We offer psychological care by both Psychologists and Provisional Psychologists. The Wellbeing staff at the schools will support families to organise the child’s Mental Health Care Plan if seeing a Psychologist. If your child is seeing our Provisional Psychologist, a Mental Health Care Plan is not required. Sessions are held in a safe and quiet space within the schools and staff will support the child to attend at the scheduled time. From time to time, it will be important for our psychologists to contact parents or carers for information about the child or to discuss how the child can be supported in the therapy. Parents and carers are also invited to contact the treating Psychologist for general information about the child’s treatment.
Fee’s & Billing
All sessions provided to your child by the Psychologist are at no cost to you. Sessions will be funded using a Mental Health Care Plan and bulk billed. For sessions with a Provisional Psychologist, there is a low cost, $50 gap that will be organised by our reception staff directly with the parent or carer. Payments can be made over the phone.
Medicare provides rebates for up to 10 sessions per calendar year and until the end of 2022 an additional 10 COVID sessions available with your GP’s approval. The process for accessing Medicare bulk billed sessions is:
● On completion of the first 6 sessions, your child will attend the GP clinic for a review in order to access the further 4 sessions. At this point the psychologist will also provide a brief letter update to the GP of your child’s progress in treatment.
● On completion of the further 4 sessions (total of 10), your child will need to attend a further review with the GP and again, the psychologist provides a letter of progress. If required, the additional 10 sessions will be recommended at this point and approved by your GP. A letter will be given from your GP that needs to be given to the Wellbeing Officer for our psychologist to continue treatment.
● Our reception staff will send SMS reminder for each review point at 6 and 10 sessions.
Please note that the reviews must occur in a timely way in order for your child to see the psychologist.
This is a Medicare requirement in order for sessions to be bulk billed.
Failure to attend reviews may result in your child missing out on sessions.
School Holidays & Lockdowns
It is possible to arrange face-to-face or tele-health sessions with the Psychologist or Provisional during school holidays and lockdowns. If you would like your child to see the Psychologist during these times, please call Emerald Psychology on 0478 125 865 for bookings.
*Please note that 48-hour notice is required to cancel a tele-health session or you will incur an $80 out of pocket, late cancellation fee.
This is not covered by Medicare.