Vision Therapy

Give your child visual skills for life.

Not all vision problems can be corrected by glasses. Our visual skills, how we process and make sense of what we see, affect our ability to read, write, concentrate and learn – things that aren’t often assessed in a standard eye exam. Vision therapy is designed to teach your child the visual skills they will need for life, such as eye tracking, focusing, convergence, concentration, visual processing speed and so much more. Glasses are not the solution when the problem is visual processing.

More than just exercises for the eyes.

Vision therapy is about more than just exercises for the eyes. A clinically proven treatment, it works by improving brain-eye communication and the effective operation of a child’s visual system – consisting of the eyes and the connecting pathways through to the visual cortex and other parts of the brain.

A child might have poor eye tracking or jumpy eye movements, which can cause them to skip words and lines, while for others the letters B, D and Q might get flipped – all of which can impact their ability to read. We use proven techniques and exercises to help them learn to read properly, focusing on areas such as eye tracking, visualisation and visual motorisation.

Virtual Percerptual Assessment

At your initial appointment, we’ll undertake a visual perceptual assessment of your child. This evaluation takes about 1.5 hours and as part of this assessment, we look at all aspects of how your child processes visual information. Are they seeing clearly? How are they processing that information?

We award them a score based on their age, and identify what needs to be worked on. We then create a customised plan tailored to their needs and we begin to work on these issues in their sessions. We also provide a detailed written report for your child’s teacher and any relevant health professionals.

Our Vision Therapy Program

We offer a fully customised and personalised treatment program for each child, designed to strengthen and improve visual skills and help retrain their visual system to process visual input with greater accuracy and ease. Our program looks at how the brain controls the eyes and improves their visual skills and how these are applied to improve reading, learning, concentration and attention.

Our vision therapy program runs in 10 weeks blocks, consisting of 10 x 50-minute weekly sessions. The needs of your child will determine the overall length of the program.

What happens in vision therapy?

We’ve developed a range of personalised exercises and activities using a variety of equipment and devices such as lenses, prisms, filters, occluders and other equipment as well as balance boards, metronomes and computer programs.

Everything is designed to be fun, engaging and playful with interactive activities and exercises. We use a touchscreen TV with vision therapy games in our programs, which we purchased through the support of grants from the Rural City of Wangaratta. We also incorporate other fun tools such as Osmo, an interactive educational tool for the iPad, with fun and engaging vision therapy activities and a visual spatial program with shapes.

What it costs?

The cost of the visual perceptual assessment is $250. No Medicare rebate is available.

This includes a detailed report that’s sent to your child’s school to help teachers better support your child in the classroom.

The cost of the vision therapy 10-week program is $1250 for 10 weekly sessions. The vision therapy program is not covered by Medicare, however you may be eligible for a rebate through your private health insurance, or you may qualify for funding through the NDIS.

Want to find out more?