The Generalist Gap: Why We Started Offering Supervision
When NDIS rolled out, paediatric OT teams across the country did the same thing ours did: broadened. Overnight, specialist services became generalist ones.
"We all kind of became pediatric generalists."
Kate was lucky early in her career — in her old role, she had seniors who knew complex seating and AT prescription cold, and she could just call them. Then those seniors retired.
What actually got lost
It wasn’t clinical skill across the board. It was something more specific.
"Nobody had that good specific knowledge of applying the OT process to that client group or that intervention."
Generalist OTs were still being asked to take on complex AT, seating, and medically complex presentations — without the senior down the hall to sense-check a script against.
It started as free advice
Supervision at Kids + Co.Lab didn’t start as a line item. It started because people kept asking Kate the same questions she used to only ask her own seniors. She did a lot of it for free — “a rising tide lifts all boats” — before realising it needed to be formalised so more OTs doing that generalist-but-actually-complex work could apply their process to it with confidence.
Three formats, because not everyone learns the same way
Group supervision: Kate describes her own role in it plainly — “part of what we do in the group space is just the facilitator… come on in and share what you’re learning and let’s all learn from each other and better the practice for everybody.” She’ll tell you she gets as much out of the reflection as anyone else in the room.
One-on-one supervision: for OTs who’d rather work through a case privately than in a group setting.
Co.Consult: built specifically for OTs who are “the only OT in town” seeing a complex case — a senior clinician joins the live session as a second pair of eyes, not a retrospective debrief after the fact.
None of the three is the “right” format. As Kate puts it, group work “really works for some, and others go ‘No, that wouldn’t work for me, I would much rather talk about it’ one-on-one.”
An honest note on where the balance sits
Kate doesn’t claim to have this fully figured out, and she’d probably tell you that’s the point. Supervision isn’t about handing over a script to follow — it’s a live, ongoing skill in its own right, worked out case by case, alongside the OTs doing the work.
Where to find her next
Kate is speaking at POTCA in November 2026 at the Eatons Hill Hotel, Brisbane — use code KATE for $25 off.