In her role, Holly provides speech pathology services to children in Young, Boorowa, Harden and the surrounding area.
As well as managing her caseload, Holly also provides education and support to local stakeholders including preschools and community groups.
She also advocates for speech pathology and broader allied health services in the community and wider region.
Ever since graduating from CSU at Albury in 2020, Holly has been based in Young and started in her current role in September 2023.
“I grew up living in various towns in regional NSW and knew I wanted to continuing living and working regionally when I graduated,” she said.
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“Young is a great little town – and being only two hours’ drive away from Wagga, Orange or Canberra means you don’t miss out on some of the benefits of a city or regional centre either.”
Holly said it is incredibly rewarding to work with children and their families.
“One of my favourite things about this job is getting to see how proud the child is of themselves when they have a breakthrough with their therapy and can see the progress they’re making,” she said.
“Moving into the Community Health role has been wonderful; you get to see such a range of presentations, whether it’s speech, language, fluency, or feeding.
“Working with babies with feeding difficulties was an area I hadn’t had much experience in previously, but I’ve been so well supported by the Wagga team and through access to professional development opportunities, my skills in this area have really grown.”
The flexibility and support Holly has received in her role has enabled her to work towards a PhD and last year, she attended the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Convention in Seattle, Washington, as a presenter. Holly is now sharing what she learned there with her colleagues in MLHD.
Holly said working at Young gives you ample opportunity to grow your skills as a generalist.
“It keeps you on your toes and you’re always learning and developing your skills for whoever walks into the clinic,” she said.
“It’s also a great opportunity to develop relationships with the community and other supports to provide a holistic service and aims to build up the skills of caregivers and educators to provide support to the children, but also so that they can be referred as soon as possible.”
