The 18th June, 2019, marked the first anniversary of Nepean Speech and Occupational Therapy (NSPOT) moving into its’ new premises on Tindale Street, Penrith. We thought we would use this occasion to take our followers for a walk down memory lane, to discover the origins of NSPOT.
In 1986, speech pathologists Christine Lewis and Lyn Rogers started a small paediatric speech pathology practice in Penrith. It was the first private speech pathology practice in Penrith, and was located right next door to our current location, in two small offices above the Trevi Restaurant in Cama House on Woodriff Street.
Over the years, there were some changes in ownership. Diana Wolf entered into the practice in 1995, and the practice was then rebranded to “Medcalf & Wolf Speech Pathology Service”. In the year 2000, Diana started providing outreach speech pathology services to local schools in the greater Penrith area. This was in response to demand from increasing amounts of families who had both parents working full time.
We are now very proud to be offering school based speech pathology services to approximately 20 schools in the greater Penrith area!
We continued working from these rooms, but by the end of 2010, it was time for a change. The business had been operating from Cama House for 24 years, and more room was needed in order to service our clients the best we could.
On the 17th January, 2011, the business relocated to its brand new premises at the Broadwalk Arcade, on High Street, Penrith. With this move came more space, and our offices increased from 2 to 3, and the introduction of technology and reception! Within a couple of years, further growth resulted in the office immediately across the Arcade being purchased. Two additional speech therapy rooms and an occupational therapy room were built.
Our Occupational Therapy services were outsourced for a couple of years, giving our families a taste of how great it was to have both Speech and occupational therapy available under the same roof! Unfortunately our OT quickly outgrew our premises and had to move on herself, leaving us without an OT for a year.
During this period, our school services also continued to grow, and we commenced running our very popular school holiday social skills groups.
In July 2016, Diana Wolf was thrilled to become the sole owner of Nepean Speech and Language Service. This would allow her to eventually achieve her dream of one day creating a multi – disciplinary practice, so that her valued clients could access speech therapy, occupational therapy and psychology under the same roof.
In October 2017, our second rebranding occurred. In response to demand from our clients, we decided to reintroduce Occupational Therapy as a service, and changed our name to Nepean Speech and Occupational Therapy (NSPOT).
Over the Christmas holiday break, we had new signage put up, and all of our rooms were repainted to reflect our rebranding.
Our first OT sessions rolled out in late January 2018. We were thrilled that we could finally offer both speech and occupational therapy under the same roof again, and so were our clients!
Referrals for both speech and occupational therapy rapidly increased, and by the start of March, we had grown out of our newly refurbished rooms!
The hunt for our new premises commenced. It took a couple of months, but we finally found our new home, right next door to where NSPOT had originally started back in 1986! It took 2 months to complete our fitout, but it was well worth the wait!
So we eventually found our wonderful new premises in the Bell Lawyer Building on Tindale Street.
What followed was a Herculean effort by Diana’s sons Steven and Eric to have the new office fit – out complete on time.
There were also so many things occurring behind the scenes, such as ordering new stationary, furniture, equipment, informing our clients and people who we work along side about our move. Social stories were prepared for many of our clients to help with the transition.
The weekend of the 16th and 17th June finally arrived, with the office 70% complete! There were some sceptics who said “You won’t be finished to open on Monday”, but luckily they were incorrect.
We made it! It was a massive massive effort, with close to midnight finishes on both the Saturday and Sunday night. We were so grateful to have family and friends come out to help, all vested in have our amazing speech and occupational therapy clinic open on time so that our clients could be seen under the same roof, and our team members members could also work together under the same roof.
12 months on, we are sitting in a wonderful situation, with our all of our speech and occupational therapy rooms being used, and we now also have psychology available 5 days a week.
All of this could not have been possible without the support of our wonderful team, both therapists and administration. Their drive, ambition and love for their job is clearly reflected in the work that they do. We are truly grateful 💜
Please take a look at the photos below of how hard we worked together on that last weekend to have our new office ready to open on the 18th June, 2018.
