About

TherapySPOT Story

Hi, my name is Kerry Wallace, I am an Occupational Therapist and the director of TherapySPOT in Perth Western Australia. The aim was to set up a hub for like-minded SPOT professionals, (Speech, Psychology and OT’s) who regard their relationship with the child and family as the starting point, and at the centre of their child’s therapy. I wanted to reproduce the model proved to be highly beneficial in my Early Intervention Centres in both Cape Town, and Johannesburg in South Africa.

My paediatric career that spans four decades started when I attended the second Sensory Integration Training course in South Africa in 1983 and left inspired by Judy Kimball, a US based OT. This experience sparked my quest to learn from world leaders in my chosen field. I was a member of SAISI from its inception and once I had completed my Sensory Integration training was invited to be part of the protocol marking team and finally Head of Edcom, having taken on roles in lecturing and training OT’s.

In the early 2000’s, I was gifted a group of very challenging pre-schoolers by my colleague Kate Bailey who was taking some time out of clinical practice. These children clearly had severe sensory processing challenges, but the level of their emotional dysregulation was off the charts, and many of them went on to receive a diagnosis of ASD. I needed more tools in my toolbox, and in the process of exploring psychodynamic approaches to treatment, I came across Stanley Greenspan, his model of DIR and Floortime. I read everything I could lay my hands on and started to implement some of the principles in my clinical work. I felt that I was on the right track, but needed more information.

I contacted Rosemary White (OT) who is a world leader in the application of DIR Principles in my profession. I invited her to come to SA to present DIR:Floortime in Cape Town in October 2010. It was a mind shift, to learn about DIR through an OT lens. Her message was loud and clear. The best way to learn DIR is to work under a mentor and receive supervision. She suggested that we attend a summer camp in Seattle. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, but an incredible learning experience.  To cut a long story short, Stanley Greenspan passed away in early 2011, and his partner Serena Wieder was given funding to start Profectum Foundation by Cuong Do, a Vietnamese immigrant to the US, who had been given the opportunity to study economics through scholarships. He is also the parent of a child with ASD.

Rosemary White arranged for me to meet Cuong Do, who was in Johannesburg on business in 2012. At this meeting he told me that he had decided that he wanted to pay it forward, by investing his life’s savings in setting up Profectum. He was therefore keen to set up sattelites in other countries, but there was one proviso. The satellites had to be non-profit organisations. I told him that I already had established a non-profit, and that providing Introductory DIR training could be part of SPOTlight Trust SA.

Although I had attended Profectum’s online training courses with the objective of becoming an international trainer, I was very keen to work in a DIR clinic with colleagues who could collaborate on difficult cases. I was offered an opportunity to join Sensory Connections by Kathy Walmsley where I spent three good years. Circumstances made it necessary for me to move on and so TherapySPOT was born. I set about finding colleagues to complement my skills to be able to provide a wholistic service for our clients.