Dr. Rosalyn Tamming:

The alternative-type therapies are not something we would be experts on by any means, but I suppose there is evidence that, for any child, regardless of whether they have a disability, extracurricular activities and things they enjoy are very important for their own development. We also know children in poverty have much less access to these and many children with disabilities are children in poverty. From those perspectives, any supports to access some of these therapies, or not therapies as such but just extracurricular activities in the mainstream, are very important.

In terms of the funding of these, there is not much evidence on an empirical basis that they work. It is not that they do not work, it is just difficult to measure whether they work. If we take something like equine therapy as an example, the people who access that tend to be from higher income families. This means there might be other things within that child’s life or very motivated parents or something that is influencing that rather than just the equine therapy itself. It is quite difficult to tease out how effective it is. It is difficult, therefore, to make recommendations around supporting those types of therapies on any sort of a large basis without that evidence.