Early intervention with Jill Hellemans

Jenn Colechin is joined by Jill Hellemans (Behaviour Analyst, Special Educator, and Child and Family counsellor; Clinical Director of All Aboard Inclusion) to unpack early intervention- especially what good early intervention can look like when it’s embedded in inclusive, real-world settings like homes, childcare, and preschool. Together, they explore why early intervention is fundamentally about building meaningful skills (not “fixing” children), how capacity-building with families and educators creates real intensity over time, and what current shifts in Australia’s NDIS landscape (including Thriving Kids) could mean for practice, particularly around natural environments, collaboration, and tiered support.

Takeaways:
Early intervention is most powerful when it builds foundational learning skills early (communication, play, transitions, tolerance, daily living skills, safety), reducing the likelihood that distress behaviours become the main way needs are communicated and met.

Progress comes from everyday practice across routines, relationships, and environments.

High-quality early intervention prioritises capacity-building: upskilling the people who are with the child most (family, educators, support staff) so strategies are used consistently and confidently.

Teaching needs to happen where life happens, like at home, community, and early childhood settings because that’s where skills are most likely to generalise and stick.

Multidisciplinary work is essential, but collaboration needs to be realistically funded and protected.

In early childhood settings, therapists who “blend in” (support routines, join play, build rapport, avoid the clipboard-in-the-corner vibe) are more likely to create sustainable change.

Early intervention is a rights-based opportunity: teaching choice-making, requesting, and rejection (including “no”) supports agency and reduces reliance on unsafe or misunderstood communication.
·      Thriving Kids could create better pathways by focusing on need (not just diagnosis), strengthening natural-environment supports, and investing earlier, before children reach school already behind.
·      Jill’s call to the field: be more visible, collaborative, and open. Show what contemporary ABA looks like in practice, learn from lived experience and past harms, and keep improving.