Off-route branch · reachable from step 5
Can your assistant take the school session?
No jurisdiction we read bans it outright. One addresses it in detail, and the conditions it attaches change your staffing maths rather than your clinical model.
Tasmania is the only department that spells this out
NDIS providers may use Therapy or Allied Health Assistants (Assistants) to help deliver services for NDIS participants. It is critical that schools are aware of the role of Assistants working with students and the school's obligation to provide supervision and duty of care.
S6 · Tasmania, policy v1.0, 12 May 2023
It is not the role of Assistants to inform student teaching and learning programs.
S6 · Tasmania, policy v1.0, 12 May 2023
a qualified allied health professional, such as a speech and language pathologist or physiotherapist, would typically require a lower level of supervision compared with a Therapy Assistant or Allied Health Assistant.
S6 · Tasmania, policy v1.0, 12 May 2023
Read the last one as a business fact. In Tasmania, sending the assistant instead of the pathologist raises the school's supervision burden, and the principal's discretion over supervision level is exactly where that lands. A school may lawfully decline on that basis. Sending your most junior person to your least-established placement is the wrong way round. [S6]
A position, not a law
What Speech Pathology Australia says, and what that is
This one gets misquoted as though it were regulation. It is a professional-body position, and the document says so in its own verbs.
The Association asserts the following tasks are NOT suitable for delegation: assessment, differential diagnosis, clinical problem solving and therapy planning.
S14 · Speech Pathology Australia, position statement 2014, addendum 20 August 2021
a support worker should only facilitate the delivery of speech pathology services if supervised by a speech pathologist
S14 · Speech Pathology Australia, position statement 2014, addendum 20 August 2021
SPA asserts and recommends. It does not legislate, and its own statement carries a disclaimer recommending independent professional advice. Its vintage matters too: a 2014 document with a 2021 addendum, and the oldest thing cited anywhere on this site. [S14]
What no department settles
Outside Tasmania, no education department we read states whether an assistant may deliver the school session in place of the pathologist. That is unestablished, not permitted and not forbidden. If it matters to your roster, ask the department before you build the schedule around it.
Page three says so plainly
The sheet does not settle the assistant question outside Tasmania, and page three says so plainly rather than filling the gap. Send me every state's gate on one sheet.
The one-pager
Every state's gate on one sheet
The four questions that actually differ, the fork where Queensland and Western Australia contradict each other, and the two jurisdictions nobody has published. Printed to keep beside the phone.
- 01 Who may make the request, per jurisdiction, and the two states that disagree
- 02 Professional indemnity and public liability minimums, with the blanks left blank
- 03 The instrument each department requires, and who signs it
…and 8 more, including the two published decision clocks and the jurisdictions we could not establish.
Get the one-pager