Cancellation Policy

At Speak and Swallow, we:

• prepare for each of our client appointments thoroughly;
• limit the number of clients we see each day to ensure we are providing a quality service to each client;
• only accept and start working with new clients when we can offer ongoing services that are likely to meet that client’s goals.

If you book an appointment with us and don’t turn up – or if you contact us to cancel an appointment with less than two working days’ notice – three things happen:

• We lose the time we have spent preparing for your appointment – time we could have spent helping another client or helping you in another way.
• We may not have enough time to reschedule another client for your appointment time, which reduces the total number of clients we can help that day. This is not fair for people on our waiting list.
• We lose income, which makes it more difficult for us to invest adequately in our workers and resources to provide you and other clients with a quality service. In some cases, this can mean that our staff don’t get paid as much for their work as they would have had the appointment happened.

We realise that emergencies and other scheduling conflicts arise and are sometimes unavoidable. However, advance notice allows us to fulfil other patient’s scheduling needs and keeps the clinic operating at its most efficient level. Our policy states that we will accept cancellations up to two business days before an appointment.

A business day for us includes Monday to Friday from 8am to 4pm. You must notify us by email or by telephone or by text.

If you fail to attend, cancel, or seek to reschedule an appointment with less than two business days’ notice you must pay us 100% of the appointment fee. We may occasionally make exceptions on compassionate grounds, solely at our discretion. If you fail to attend two or more appointments, we reserve the right to discharge you and/or any person under your care from our service.

If we need to cancel an appointment for any reason, we will inform you as early as possible. We do not expect this to happen except in exceptional circumstances (e.g., speech pathologist is ill). Any planned absences (e.g., leave, professional development) have already been factored when the Support Plan was created. You will not be charged, but we will not be liable to compensate you for any other expenses you’ve incurred in connection with the appointment.