Leading Lights

Our History

A message from Annabel Yagos- Founder and Director.

Not long after moving to Australia from the UK, at the age of 11 years I was involved in a building collapse that left me with a severe brain injury, including paralysis down the left side of my body. It was an intensive 8year recovery process that saw me having to learn how to walk again, talk again, retrain my memory and develop my learning abilities, and my executive functioning skills that would allow me to participate in school and daily life.

I lost a significant amount of my childhood memory, including from before and after my accident. I experienced the physical challenges, the social challenges and the academic challenges that come with living with a disability. I quickly discovered the therapy sessions that I enjoyed, and the therapy sessions that I dreaded attending.
The therapy sessions that have had a lasting impact on my life were the ones that were holistically tailored to me as an individual. I have a particularly fond memory of a therapist who would visit me with a keyboard in hospital. She would prop my left arm up with pillows and rest my hand on the keyboard keys. We would then play duets together. I could never show her the songs I could play with both hands, but I remember the sensation that ran down my left arm as I wished I could.

At the age of 15, I became very aware that I was reliant on the supervision of my occupational therapist and many other therapists, to be able to confidently participate in my environments. This was in part, due to the lack of understanding of my disabilities from supporting adults around me. This included my parents and teachers. This made me angry! It was then that I decided ‘when I grow up I want to be one person who could do everything’ when it comes to supporting children. From there, I immersed myself in study and research.

In 2015 I came across the Key Worker Model that was introduced by the National Disability Insurance Scheme as a way of supporting the whole family for children under 7 years. In that time, I used my personal and academic knowledge and experiences to fill fundamental gaps within the Model and create a new version of the Key Worker, that includes supporting children of all ages. This was defined by the integration of the following areas:
  • Our Key Worker Model starts with the Key Worker. By allowing your Lead Practitioner to assist your family in assessing and identifying development goals for your child, you can then be linked in with the relevant professionals for assessment. This means your Key Worker is not just receiving support information, but is developing a solid and informed relationship with you from the start!
  • Sibling support though social and educational experiences
  • Parent and Carer advocacy and guidance, with a special focus on supporting carers through educational and real-life experiences, not just parenting programs.
  • Focusing on the whole child, and not just the deficits or struggle areas.
  • Combining multi-disciplinary practice and research through a combined model; allied health, holistic health, and medical.
  • Upskilling teachers and families with knowledge (not just resources) that enable them to understand and confidently cater for the needs of children.
  • Allowing the child to be the Leading Light in their journey by not using categories and checklist to dictate the implementation of approaches to therapy and intervention.
In opening our Altree Court clinic, I have assembled a team of like-minded, holistically aligned practitioners with each of their own lived experience and unique stories that have drawn them to this one-of-a-kind, Canberra’s first Paediatric Early Intervention Clinic. It is here, that we bring together holistic, medical, and allied health therapies to support our families and their special souls who are the literally- the Leading Lights in their own healing journey.

Today Leading Lights brings together and offer to our families, Neuroscience, Education, Psychology, Speech Pathology, Occupational Therapy, Counselling, Medicinal Nutrition, Yoga Therapy, Anthropology, and Social Work.

We are so excited to be leaders in this field and look forward to progressing research and making a difference, in both understanding and therapeutic care, in the future that will directly affect your own family and families yet to walk this path with us.