Getting started — CDS Interventions

Step one

Get in touch.

Email me or call 0409 429 494. Tell me your child's age and year level and what you're seeing — at home, in their schoolwork, in what their teacher has said. That's all I need to start.

I work with upper-primary and secondary students in person in Heidelberg, in Melbourne's north-east. If you're not sure whether what you're seeing is a real problem, get in touch anyway; the baseline will tell us, and it costs nothing.

Step two

The free baseline assessment.

We meet, your child and I, for about an hour. It's a meet-and-greet as much as a test — it's for both of us to see whether this will work. During it I run three things:

A spelling placement test that puts your child on the Spelling Mastery sequence and, more usefully, shows exactly which word-parts and rules are missing. The individual errors are the point: they wrote this, which tells me that.
A reading placement that separates decoding from accuracy. Many children can read every individual word and still lose their place, skip words or add them; others genuinely can't yet sound words out. Those are different problems with different fixes, and the test tells me which one we have.
A fluency benchmark (DIBELS) — a short timed read and a comprehension task, scored against national norms for their year level, so we have a number to measure against later.

Comparable clinics charge $250–500 for this. With me it's included, because I want us both to know exactly what we're working with before you commit to anything.

Step three

A written summary, and a decision.

Within a few days you get an email with the results in plain English: where your child placed and why, the specific errors and what each one points to, the reading numbers and what they mean, and where we'd begin. It's a map, not a verdict. If your child is a careful, accurate reader who happens to spell by guesswork, I'll say so, rather than let you go home thinking "reading problem" when it isn't one.

Then you decide. There's no pressure from my end; the assessment is yours to keep either way.

Step four

Weekly sessions, and the week in between.

One 45-minute session a week, one-to-one, in person. Same day and time each week. Every session is built for your child from the placement results and the week before — nothing generic, nothing read off a script. Between sessions there's a short daily worksheet, a daily handwritten spelling test on the phone app, and a few minutes of paired reading with you. All of it is coached, resourced and kept under ten minutes a piece. After every session you get a written review. The whole week is laid out on What's in a week.

What it costs

$140 per session.

The baseline assessment is free. Sessions are $140 each — 45 minutes one-to-one, plus the whole week's homework materials, the daily app, the paired-reading books, and the written review, all included.

You're invoiced after each session, by email, with seven days to pay by bank transfer. No term fees up front, no lock-in: if it isn't working for your child, you stop. Sessions follow the school term, with a break over the holidays unless we agree otherwise.

CDS Interventions is a sole-trader business, ABN 89 354 451 575. Invoices come from [email protected]; everything else comes from me.

★ Always free · No obligation

Start with a baseline.

Every child begins with a full diagnostic assessment — reading and spelling testing, a clear picture of exactly where the gaps are, and a conversation about what comes next. Comparable clinics charge $250–500 for this. With me it's included.