Tamie Aubin’s decision to focus on pediatric physiotherapy (PT) came when she took a course in PT university with Johanna Darrah, who co-authored one of the standardized assessment tools still used today, AIMS.
Aubin said that’s when she knew, “Yes, this is what I want to be doing.”
It was just over 16 years ago that Aubin and her family moved from northern Alberta to Ontario.
“I wanted to work in a children’s treatment centre,” she said. She got a part-time position at Lansdowne Children’s Centre, and from there, “it just gradually progressed.”
Aubin is now wrapping up her time as the Occupational Therapy (OT) and PT Services Manager at Lansdowne, while also working in the new role as the Director of Client Services as Jennifer Huxley retires.
“Jennifer was the one who hired me. She was my manager when I was a physiotherapist. We have definitely built a relationship along those years,” Aubin said, adding that she’s been continually learning throughout her time at Lansdowne, from Huxley and previous service directors.
“There’s been a lot that I’ve been able to glean from working with everybody and appreciated all the valuable mentorship from everybody along the way.”
One of the most effective ways Lansdowne staff have had to learn from each other over the years was actually thanks to Aubin: the establishment of the Holistic Integration Teams (HITs).
When she and her family first moved to Ontario, Aubin was in the middle of completing her Masters in Rehabilitation Science. As part of her thesis work, she looked at how services were provided at Lansdowne and how they could be enhanced. She put forward the idea of the centre forming teams of staff members across multiple disciplines to work collaboratively in a transdisciplinary model, so that – among other benefits – families wouldn’t have to repeat the same information multiple times to different service providers, and multiple staff could be part of one appointment, to reduce the number of times families would have to come to the centre.
The pilot program was soon made permanent, and now “It still is going strong as one of our best practice models of services for our families,” Aubin said.
She noted that multiple staff have told her over the years that they appreciate the cross-discipline collaborative learning that happens as a member of a HITs team.
The fact that HITs teams were able to be piloted in the first place speaks to what Aubin sees as one of Lansdowne’s greatest strengths.
“We are open to looking at how we can support families in ways that allow our staff to think outside the box – of course, within our best practice mandates,” she said.
That’s an approach that she fully intends to bring forward into her new role.
“It’s more of that bigger picture; how do we continue to support our families in providing that type of best practice, family centred, solution focused model of service in all of our programs?”
There are plenty of arenas to explore that question, such as in following Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services directives to provide a tiered model of service, and in looking at how AI tools might be utilized.
Aubin noted that in the early days of the HITs teams, “We started it out as a pilot; we evaluated it, we learned from it, we expanded, and we tried different things to look at changes and then evaluated it again.”
Stepping into her new role, Aubin said her focus will be determining what’s already working well and exploring how to build on that existing success, while also “continuing to ensure that we use our best practice philosophies; working collaboratively with all the programs; and maintaining the partnerships with our communities, our families, all of our stakeholders.”
Because she knows that “even though my hands aren’t the ones that are there in a physio session,” with a client, “ultimately, I’m still making a difference for the child and the family.”
That’s been one of the main driving forces that has kept Aubin at Lansdowne throughout the years; the knowledge that, “being part of this organization, it’s always been about the kids.”
