Michelle Batey
DIRECTOR/ SENIOR SPEECH PATHOLOGIST
Michelle Batey (nee Santarelli) is the director and owner of Early Start Speech Pathology.
Michelle first commenced her career in 2004 working for Hunter New England Community Health service in Forster, Taree and later at East Maitland. She has worked at Early Intervention Centres, an adult Rehabilitation Hospital, community preschools and other private practices in Queensland where she discovered her passion for working long term with clients, to achieve the best speech pathology outcomes.
Michelle moved back to Newcastle in 2009, and worked for a large multidisciplinary private practice, then decided it was time to work independently. This was the start of Early Start Speech Pathology. Early Start has grown from a single team member to now a team of 14..
Michelle has a special interest in Autism and has a real attachment to working with her adolescents, supporting them navigating their school system and social world, working holistically with the child’s team of therapists and school as well as using the child’s special interests in therapy approaches, always.
Michelle has extensive training in: HANEN, Floortime DIR training, Early Start Denver Model (EDSM), Intensive Interaction, Making up Lost time in Literacy (MULTILIT), Sounds-Write and extensive emergent literacy and literacy training through Macquarie University Reading Clinic. When thinking about social communication, Michelle works closely with her client's goals and incorporates Social Thinking vocabulary in her treatment approach. Michelle is UCLA Peers trained. She regularly attended the Spectronics Inclusive Learning Technologies Conferences as well as the Asia Pacific Autism Conferences. Michelle is PROMPT trained and has attended Key Word Signing workshops as well as extensive phonological, articulation and Childhood Apraxia of Speech training workshops. Michelle is PODD trained and has extensive understanding and approaches to Alternate and Augmentative Communication (AAC) Systems, knowing that one system does not fit all.
Michelle works closely with some of Newcastle's highly regarded and respected Clinical Psychologists and Paediatricians, being part of the process and the diagnostic path of Autism Spectrum Disorder and other Learning Disorders.
Michelle is a Pearson Clinical Examiner and assists Pearson Clinical with undertaking Australian wide research in the area of speech pathology assessments and procedures.
Michelle works at random hours, whilst juggling the business and her young family. Her clinical days are Mondays and Thursdays from the Lambton office but she can be found anywhere really.
