Looking for safe and effective healthcare for your child so their developing years (and beyond) are healthy and vibrant?
Our functional medicine expert, Rebecca Hughes, can help with a range of children’s health conditions:
When a child has health problems, the effects can be far-reaching, often placing the family unit under extra stress. This is why working with children is one of our greatest joys - we love nothing more than seeing smiling faces when a child's health is restored!
While the conventional approach to children's health is to manage conditions with medications or surgery, rarely is the problem resolved. This can have long-term effects on their health, extending into their adult years. The good news is that many chronic children's health conditions can be managed by identifying triggers, receiving personalised advice, and having the right support. Here's how we help:
In a 4-hour consult, functional medicine practitioner Rebecca will work with you via telehealth to explore why your child’s health issues have occurred through an in-depth analysis of their health. She may also use functional tests to explore factors such as:
The greatest gift you can give a child is the gift of health. Your practitioner will create a personalised, evidence based plan for your child, so they can be healthy and happy again. And, you'll finally know what makes them feel well (and what doesn’t).
Making changes to your child’s diet and lifestyle can be challenging, with children often resisting change.
With the ongoing support of your health coach, an expert in behaviour change, you and your child will feel empowered to address their health in a way that’s enjoyable and lasting, learning health skills that’ll set them up for a life of good health and wellness.
Our healthcare approach gets us 5-star reviews on Google. You too, can work with us to improve your child's health and elevate their quality of life.
If you've tried and failed to solve your child's health problem through other medical means, you understand that 'quick fixes' don't often result in long-term health gains. That's why we dedicate significant time to investigating your concerns and customising a scientifically based, results-focused program for your child.
Your health investment includes:
6 months uncapped care
Dedicated Functional Medicine Practitioner
Dedicated Health Coach
4 hour initial consult
World's best pathology testing*
Personalised resources
Payment plans and telehealth available.
*Lab and supplement costs additional
For international patients, the program extends to 7 months at $7800. See our FAQs for more info.
Feel confident and safe in moving forward with us: Book your initial four-hour consultation ($980) to see how we work. If you feel we aren't the right fit for you after your consultation, there’s no obligation to go further with us.
Our approach is personalised, collaborative and focused on your child's health. See what past patients say about our 6-month program in the video below.
Take the first step towards better health for your child now. Book a free call with one of our experts to see if we’re the right fit to partner with on your child's health journey.
Browse our FAQs by category below.
Yes, we work with patients across the globe via telehealth. However, as managing international logistics as well as labs and supplements in local countries requires more time, and often time delays, how we deliver our program is a little different. Therefore, for international patients, the program duration extends from 6 to 7 months, with a program fee of $7800. This allows us to maintain the same high level of care that we provide our local patients.
Our functional medicine expert, Rebecca Hughes, has achieved great success with helping children regain their health through telehealth consultations from her remote clinic in Perth.
Functional medicine is a revolutionary healthcare approach that addresses chronic health issues. Research now shows that children's health issues are influenced mainly by their diet, lifestyle and environment. Holistic functional medicine also acknowledges that each person is biochemically unique and that solving a health problem starts with finding the cause of the problem. Therefore, the resolution of health issues for children requires a root-cause based, personalised approach.
Functional medicine practitioners seek to understand your child and their health picture, as well as their diet and lifestyle. When all of these elements are brought together and assessed, we can start to build a clear picture of what’s going on and why. This assessment can often involve functional pathology testing to dig more deeply into your child's health. Once insights become clear, your functional medicine practitioner will create a personalised treatment plan to solve the root cause and contributing factors to your child's health concerns. The outcome is that your child's health can be restored.
Around 80% of people fail to achieve their health goals. This is because our habits around health are hardwired into us, making it difficult to change (which is why it’s so easy to reach for that bar of chocolate without thinking). Often, when it comes to food in particular, there’s an underlying emotional connection that needs to be addressed before lasting change can occur. Health coaches understand the science of behavioural change, so they will help you and your child navigate change with clarity and ease.
Health coaches intimately understand the challenges that come with getting your child's health back, so they will be your sidekick, supporter and guide every step of the way. In fact, past patients often rave about the support their health coach gave them - a service they hadn’t realised existed or that they needed until they experienced it themselves. We’re confident you’ll discover that too!
Unfortunately, when it comes to chronic health issues like your child may be facing, quick fixes and magic pills rarely work. Perhaps you’ve tried them on conventional drugs and found that to be true.
This is because the conventional approach simply looks to suppress or manage symptoms rather than solve the issue completely. Using the functional medicine approach, your practitioner will invest a lot of time investigating your child's case to pinpoint what’s causing their condition or symptoms. This detective phase typically takes about 4-6 weeks, especially if pathology testing is required. During this time, you’ll be assisting your child to implement some small steps, possibly experimenting with food or lifestyle, and gathering more data that will help your practitioner form a clearer picture of what’s going on with your child's health.
The implementation stage typically involves implementing steps bit by bit over several months so that your child can make sustainable, simple changes. Much of their success lies in making the changes required to support their body back to good health. Using our understanding of behavioural change, we know that implementing changes in small steps is the recipe for long-term success.
We’ll be here as long as you and your child need us. At the end of the 6-month program, we simply transition to a more customary pay per session model. Each 45-minute session with your child's practitioner will be $198, and 1-hour calls with a health coach will be $148. Your Slack channel (our main communication platform) will stay open for your general queries and needs.
Your practitioner will be in full detective mode to understand all the pieces of your child's health puzzle and get to the root of their problem. This involves understanding their health history, diet, lifestyle and other factors like existing test results to start joining the dots on their health.
During this time, you’ll be able to ask as many questions as you like about your child's health. If you have a list of questions you’ve had unanswered for some time, bring them along! Your practitioner will help clarify what’s going on with your child's health and explain things in simple terms versus technical jargon.
Towards the end of the session, your practitioner will formulate a health plan alongside you to tackle your child's health issues. Following that, your health coach will join the session, and you’ll brief them on what you’ve learned so far and share the treatment plan that you designed with your practitioner.
Your health coach will organise any supplements and testing for your child and will schedule your first coaching appointment, so together, you can work out the practical steps to take in your child's treatment plan.
You’ll walk away from the session with some insight into what could be causing your child's health condition. You’ll also likely feel a sense of hope and excitement about the possibilities of having their health back on track!
Follow-up consultations are typically 30 minutes. Each session will consider the effectiveness of any interventions implemented and will seek to gain further insight into your child's condition or explore other issues that need addressing.
The duration of the coaching calls will differ depending on how your child is doing! At the start, coaching sessions tend to be longer and more intensive as you and your child are in a learning and growth phase.
As your child progresses through the program, sessions are typically a weekly 15–30-minute call along with more frequent contact via Slack - an app that you can access on your phone or desktop for quick and easy communication. Your health coach will be in touch regularly to give you as much support as you require to help your child meet their goals!
As chronic diseases are caused by dietary, lifestyle and environmental factors, the short answer is yes. So if you’re considering working with us, you must be committed to doing what’s needed for your child to get the best results. We give you insights into why change would benefit your child and how some of these factors are impacting their health negatively, so you’ll be armed with insights and motivation to make changes. In this way, change will be a gift rather than a hindrance as your child will feel so much better because of it.
After supporting hundreds of patients through this program, we know that the one thing that sets us apart from other practitioners like children’s naturopaths is our unique approach. First, our children’s health functional medicine practitioner, Rebecca Hughes, has a broad range of knowledge about children's health. By using the methodical and thorough functional medicine approach, she leaves no stone unturned when finding the root cause of your child's health concerns.
When you add health coaching into the equation, the chances of success increase greatly because you’ll have someone walking with you step by step through all the challenges that often stop children from getting better.
That said, you do have to be prepared and willing to do what’s needed to get your child's health back, which usually involves changes to their diet and lifestyle.
A deposit of $980 is required upon booking, and the remaining balance ($5820) is to be paid at your initial consultation or paid monthly over six months, with our payment partners.
To find out more about payment solutions download our resource here.
Any supplements or lab testing will incur additional fees.
All contact with your practitioner and coach are included in the program fee. Other costs you can potentially expect are for laboratory tests and supplements. Your practitioner will discuss the costs for any tests or supplements they recommend in your sessions.
Unfortunately, as of April 1, 2019, most private health insurers won’t offer rebates for our services.
Most of the testing we do seeks to understand how pathways or systems in the body function. These tests are typically more in-depth and comprehensive than you would’ve encountered before.
We sometimes request standard blood chemistry from your child's GP for more basic tests, and if we need to go more in-depth, such as looking at microbiome health or food sensitivities, we use the world’s leading labs:
Precision Analytical
Genova Diagnostics
KBMO
NutriPath
Metametrix
Mosaic Diagnostics
Bioceuticals for DNA testing
Many of these labs are overseas, so test results can take a few weeks to come back.
Unfortunately, Medicare only pays for standard tests, conventional medical tests, many of which we find don’t give a clear enough window into your child's health. The tests we order are different from conventional tests you’ve likely experienced and found to be unhelpful before finding us.
GPs, unless they are functional medicine trained, are only trained in interpreting standard tests that look for pathologies (disease) rather than looking purely at assessing the function of pathways or systems. The functional pathology tests that we use can identify pre-disease states and look at other determining factors that contribute to diseases.
Learning about and interpreting the latest functional pathology tests takes years of functional medicine training and involves continued education as new scientific insights arise.
Given these labs are privately billed, we seek to balance the need for more data on your child's health with a desire to look after your wallet. Therefore, the amount of lab tests we do varies by individual. Typically, when we ask you to invest in testing of this nature, the cost is worth the investment as we uncover insights that inform your child's recovery.
Our clinic hours are:
9:00am – 5:00pm Monday to Thursday
However, you can reach us outside of those hours via phone or email.
Our clinic is located at 186 Buckhurst Street, South Melbourne and our children’s health functional medicine practitioner Rebecca Hughes consults with patients via telehealth from her remote clinic in Perth.
Yes. If you're in Melbourne, Perth, Brisbane, Sydney, Adelaide or elsewhere in the world and are seeking a functional medicine children’s health specialist or a children’s health naturopath for a holistic approach to your child’s health, telehealth appointments are available.
Our functional medicine expert, Rebecca Hughes, has had great success with helping patients with children’s health conditions via telehealth from her remote clinic in Perth.
Can’t find what you’re looking for? Reach out to the team directly – we’ll be happy to assist.
