Your first visit

Please arrive at least 15 minutes before your first appointment to allow time to find a park and to answer a few questionnaires. Free parking is available at the centre for up to 3 hours.

What to bring

At your first appointment, please bring:

  1. Referrals from your GP or specialist.
  2. Your Medicare card.
  3. Any information that you think might assist Dr. Fryer in her initial assessment, e.g. previous assessments and reports, medical letters or discharge summaries.

What to expect at your first appointment

First appointments are scheduled for 90 minutes. In the first appointment we all start in the room for the first ten minutes or so to get a broad idea of what it is that you have to come to see me about. I then spend time separately with the parent and child or adolescent to get each perspective on the concerns. With the parents, it is also an opportunity to gather further history that is important to the assessment.

If you are a mother, father or carer attending with perinatal challenges, feel free to choose whether or not to bring your baby to the first appointment. It is fine to bring baby if you want to or if it is difficult to arrange alternative care. I also recognise that some parents may want to talk about their concerns and get to know me first, before bringing baby along, and that is fine too.

We all come back together at the end of the first appointment to make sure you are comfortable to continue in my care and develop a plan. In my experience the first appointment time goes very quickly and there is often more information to be gathered. The treatment plan will often include more assessment through appointments and requesting information from schools or other services.

The goal is to be confident that a sound, shared understanding of the problems and issues has been developed, together with recognizing the family and individual strengths. This provides a solid foundation for discussing a treatment plan. Sometimes treatment options are identified and started alongside further assessment and refined as we go. Treatment options may be discussed at the end of the first appointment but, due to time constraints and the complexity of most of the problems I see, treatment is often not started until following appointments.