Supporting Aussie families.

The Parental Stress Centre has been working with parents since 2007.  We have worked with hundreds of families with autistic children outside and within our autism specific program.  We believe every parent knows their child best and is their best teacher.  We provide support for parents to improve their wellbeing, and lots of evidenced-based tools so they are better equipped to support their child.

Jackie Hall, founder of The Parental Stress Centre and this course facilitator, is a qualified counsellor and member of the Australian Counselling Association (ACA). She has worked in mental health for the past 12 years, with extensive experience in trauma, anxiety, depression, personality disorders, eating disorders, and more. 

• Specialised skills in CBT for Anxiety and Depression.
• 11 years of Trauma Counselling experience including EMDR (for PTSD, anxiety and depression).
• Residential Youth Care, working with complex needs autistic children.
• Training for Challenging child behaviours, Solution-Focussed Therapy and Trauma-informed approaches.
• Registered ‘Circle of Security’ Facilitator
• Tuning into Teens accredited facilitator

Working in residential youth facilities, Jackie often worked with autistic children with co-existing complex backgrounds, applying the very strategies you will learn in this program, including therapeutic crisis intervention strategies for complex and aggressive behaviours.

This program is absolutely neurodiverse affirming.  We are not here to ‘fix’ anyone and just want to help both parents and children become the best version of themselves possible.  

We are all about understanding why behaviour makes sense to your child and giving you a whole bunch of tools and strategies to help both of you.

As part of this course creation, Jackie Hall also became an Applied Behaviour Therapist, however soon realised that some of their approaches were not in alignment with our values and thus, we do not teach ABA principles in our courses, hence why we do not openly advertise this qualification.

The program is CBT based and ‘child-centric’.  Jackie has a trauma therapy informed background and is passionate about helping people understand pain-based behaviour.

You will get the most out of the course if you can find approximately 2-3 hours per week.

The content is delivered as daily bite-sized lessons Monday through Friday,  and weekly videos, all of which can be consumed at your convenience and pace.

You do not have to be online at any particular times to view, read or listen.

The daily lessons take on average, around 15 minutes per day and can be listened to or read.

The weekly videos take about an hour on average (some a little more and some a little less) and are the core of the program.  If you are too time poor, just find the time to watch the weekly video and catch the daily lessons when you can. There is no pressure to watch the videos in a certain time frame.

We deliberately do NOT give you daily lessons on Saturdays and Sundays to allow weekends as an opportunity to catch up if any lessons were missed during the week, and to give you some space to digest the week’s content.

It’s also an opportunity to use this time to watch the weekly video too. 

The only times that are set are when we have our 4 x live group webinars that are run as an optional Q&A session you can attend if you want to have a real time conversation with Jackie.  They are held fortnightly, generally starting at 8.30pm AEDST.

If you cannot attend them, support from Jackie can also be given through the closed Facebook group specifically for participants of this round of the program only and via email if you don’t wish to post in the group.

The program fee is a one-off cost of $1495 ($1495.12 if using an NDIS plan). The fee gives you lifetime access to the Autism Parenting Program, 14 additional online parenting programs as well as ongoing online counselling support. Our 9 week Autism Parenting Program with live counselling support can be redone as many times as you like so you are never far away from support and advice.

This program is suitable for children 3 years old all the way through teens to young adults.  It is all about understanding the thinking behind the behaviour and why that behaviour makes sense to your child.  Where we give specific younger children examples and strategies we will also give older children examples and vice versa.  

No.  You don’t have to pay twice.  Regardless of your family situation, we encourage both parents to do the program.  Once you enroll, just send us a quick email with the second parent’s Name, Phone, and Email Address and we will get them set up with their own unique login so you can both participate in the program at your own pace.  It is just one fee for both parents to have lifetime access.  

This program is designed as an ‘in between session’ support service.

With the increase of wait times for psychological support and other services, never before have we more needed an online solution to help parents manage stressful situations.

While face-to-face psychological support and services will always be superior to online support, the reality is that you see your psychologist once a week, fortnight or month and then have to wait until your next session before you can troubleshoot a problem.  Our program assists you in between these appointment times: providing strategies to implement the information provided in the appointments, troubleshoot behaviours at school while they are happening and provide in-the-moment support during stressful times at home.

Because this program provides lifetime access to online support from a qualified counsellor 7 days a week, you can be reaching out for help whenever you need it, and from the comfort of your own home.

And, because you are getting this support for life, you can access it through any of the stages of your child’s life. Utilise the support service, as well as the 15 programs available to you, to help you to navigate through the different ages and stages of your child’s development.

There are three criteria a plan needs to meet for you to be able to use your NDIS funds for this course.

1. You need to be plan managed or self-managed (unfortunately, we cannot use NDIA managed plans).
2. You need to have available funding in your Capacity Building – Improved Daily Living.
3. Your plan must include goals for your child that are similar to emotional regulation or mental health improvement.

The line item we use under Capacity Building is #15_038_0117_1_3 – Parent & Carer Training.

Still Not Sure?  Send us an enquiry and we will contact you.

Our process is super easy!

All you have to do is click on the button below to fill in the NDIS Invoice Request form, and we will take care of the rest.

Sign up Using an NDIS Plan

Here’s the full process of what happens next…

Some LAC’s and plan managers will tell you that they cannot pay for this course until the date of commencement, as the NDIS does not pay for future dated programs. 

Although our 9 week Program itself has a start date, as part of this program all participants get immediate access to our full suite of 15 programs and online support and webinars once payment is made through our gold program.

Because the gold program provides immediate and lifetime access, thus has no end date, this satisfies the NDIS requirement that the service be delivered at the time of invoicing.

When you have your initial plan/review meeting with the NDIS, you will be setting some key goals for your child to meet.  NDIS funding is designed to support the achievement of these goals.

If you want to get this program fee included in your child’s NDIS plan, you need to demonstrate how this program, along with the suite of programs (15 of them) you get as part of this fee, is going to help you to learn the skills necessary to ACHIEVE YOUR CHILDS’ GOALS (this is important to the NDIS).

Setting and meeting your child’s goals are what’s going to be the focal point from the NDIS perspective, so the more you can convince them that our programs are going to help you to obtain the skills to meet those goals, the better stead you’ll be to get funded.

Often ’emotional regulation’ is a goal that aligns with our program, as Jackie is teaching you skills that can assist your child to regulate their emotions and by regulating your emotions, you’re going to be able to regulate your child’s more easily too.

FYI, your LAC (local area coordinator) may not remember to tell you this, but any specific request for funding that you make has to be submitted, so it would pay to specifically ask for this course fee to be funded somewhere in the program.

Typically, it will come under the ‘Parent & Carer Training’ line item, which sits in the Capacity Building – Improved Daily Living section.

Here is a link to an itemised costing report that breaks down the program and has a course overview that aligns with the emotional regulation goals and also contains key line item from the current NDIS price guide in the  Capacity Building budget – ‘Parent & Carer Training’ – Line item # 15_038_0117_1_3.  You can download this document and take it to your LAC so they can submit your request to have this course included in your plan.

Some LACs and plan managers may try to tell you that this program is not NDIS registered and therefore cannot be accessed.  However, this only applies to NDIA managed plans. Whilst the Parental Stress Centre is not a registered NDIS service provider, participants whose plans are self managed or plan managed may use their choice and control to engage non-registered NDIS service providers.

In summary, if you are self-managed or plan managed, or you have partial plan or self-managed sections of the plan that have access to capacity building – improved daily living, adequate funding available, and the program aligns with the child’s goals, this program can be eligible for funding through an NDIS plan.

No. Not at all.  Many people sign up to the program in the final days, and even the first few days after the program begins, and that’s completely fine.

Whenever we are close to the starting date of the course and it is unlikely that we will receive payment before we commence, here’s what we do:

• If Plan managed – we simply call your plan manager and get confirmation that your invoice is being processed and that verification is enough for us to see that payment is pending and we are happy to set you up on the program right away. We don’t need to wait for funds to finalise before you can get started.
• If Self-managed – Once you submit your claim though the NDIS or MyGov portal, just take a screen shot of the receipt you get after you submit the invoice, and we will take that as verification that payment is pending and set you up on the system.  If for some reason the NDIS declines your payment and we cannot help you to troubleshoot, we simply withdraw you from the program.  You would NOT be obligated to fund the program yourself.

You see, it’s super simple.  The next step is to click on the button below to fill in the NDIS Invoice Request Form and we’ll be able to get the ball rolling for you.

Sign up Using an NDIS Plan