FUSE
What is FUSE?
FUSE (Functional, Unified Support for Engagement) is an innovative model to deliver school-based speech and occupational therapy, guiding allied health recommendations with parent insight and their informed consent.
FUSE creates a cycle of feedback and growth: At the individual level, FUSE can deliver outcomes like improved language, articulation, literacy, social skills, and classroom engagement; at the community level, FUSE builds stronger schools, responsive community-led resource provisioning that reflect needs and develops existing capacity, while addressing systemic barriers such as over-reliance on women’s unpaid labour, particularly in NESB and indigenous communities, and reduced access to the NDIS.
"Act Locally, Think Globally"
Patrick Geddes
Systemises Insights
Leverages tech for communication ease and data collection to troubleshoot barriers.
Implements Support
With shared knowledge and collaboration we ensure therapy implementation.
Builds capacity
Our aim is to empower individuals, families and our community by resourcing needs.
Scales Impact
Schools’ 70% engagement drives equity. Schools are leading the way with innovation and FUSE enhances impact.
How does FUSE work?
FUSE is a service-delivery model to transform NDIS support, particularly for NESB and Indigenous kids. It’s a partnership between teachers, parents, and therapists, delivering school-based speech and occupational therapy.
By troubleshooting barriers, such as low engagement or service gaps, FUSE ensures therapy reaches kids where they learn, fostering individual growth and community strength, with the power to scale across schools.
FUSE
Addressing Needs and Gaps
FUSE meets urgent needs for all children accessing the NDIS by addressing barriers to effective service provision
Access Gaps
What: Only 65% of eligible kids access NDIS therapy; NESB families at 45%, Indigenous at 38% (NDIA, 2025).
How: FUSE uses technology to systematically review implementation and effectiveness, responding to changing needs.
Unpaid Labour
What: NESB and Indigenous mothers, 90% of primary caregivers, spend ~20 hours per week navigating NDIS plans.
How: Creating ease and simplifying communications, access and understanding is the core. We prioritise your convenience.
Cultural Care
What: Historical and systemic factors foster mistrust in healthcare systems, reducing NDIS engagement.
How: FUSE has conversations with people, checking assumptions and responding to lived reality, so we can meet you where you are.
Service Shortages
What: 20% shortfall in speech/OT providers in WA, driven by fee undercutting devaluing our workforce, and high admin loads.
How: We listen, collaborate and build from the bottom up. We don’t gate-keep, we open the door to understanding and growth.
Cultural Care & Advocacy
The Barriers
Mistrust from historical injustices and systemic racism blocks NDIS access. Models prioritising profit over care.
The Present
Non-Indigenous NGOs dominate ~60–70% of NDIS funds, displacing local providers with promises and cost savings.
The Solution
Community partnerships. Reality, not blame. Learning, not imposing. Sharing, not stealing. Truth-telling, not secret keeping.
FUSE adapts to remote Indigenous communities by centering schools as hubs for culturally safe therapy, amplifying voices parents prioritise—Elders, kin, ACCOs.
Our feedback loop ensures therapists prioritise lived realities and preferences into recommendations, with parents calling the shots. This orientation to ‘capacity building’ and ‘parental choice and control’ is the spirit and the intention of the NDIS. FUSE is built to honour that intention.
We monitor implementation, tackling access barriers, like shortages through solutions (like fly-in assessments, technology), and capacity-building, (like providing training, resource development). FUSE collaborates to share resources, building community strength without stealing agency.
Our aim is to maximise existing NDIS budgets to ensure therapy provision, and evaluate effectiveness to ensure funding adequacy. Sidestepping middle men we maximise what you already have and secure what you require so that your children gets the therapy they need.
Aboriginal communities hold immense wisdom—cultural protocols, family strengths—yet Western systems dismiss it, ~16,000 eligible kids with no therapy, and ~$79 million of NDIS budgets unspent yearly (40% underspend, NDIA, 2023). Carers, mostly women, provide ~$1.5–$1.6 billion in unpaid labor (~20 hours/week, Carey et al., 2021), including ~$750 million for kids. NGOs displace Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations, reducing culturally safe care (NDIS Review, 2023). Overall, ~42,000 Indigenous participants are underserved, ~20,000 waitlisted, and ~15,000 face inadequate therapy due to 20% allied health “shortages” and mistrust (33%, NDIA, 2023). FUSE’s aim is simple: use the community’s knowledge and power, and resource the hell out of it.
The Cost of Nothing –
Impact on Indigenous Communities
NGOs’ market share growth wastes funds and denies services, with ~$79 million unused annually, ~42,000 Indigenous participants underserved, and social costs from unpaid caregiving amplified.
The data here reflects the impact on Aboriginal Communities.
Underused plans?
~$79m
Waiting for services
~20k
unpaid labour
~$1.3b
kids with no therapy
~16k
BOOK A CHAT
We’d love to hear from you.
JOIN FUSE
Join the FUSE network of providers
Make the world a better place!
We can do it, but only together. That’s the truth. Collaboration not hoarding, learning not imposing, sharing not stealing. Interested in FUSE? Drop Alexandra a line.
