The road to NAPA

By Katherine Granich

From Singapore and LA to Lane Cove, how one family’s journey to help their daughter brought a new approach to therapy to Australia

For Louise Conn, the story of NAPA Centre in Australia begins nearly 20 years ago with the birth of her daughter, Georgia.

Following Georgia’s traumatic birth and hypoxic brain injury, Louise and her husband Mick were given a grim picture of their daughter’s future. Her condition was described as “catastrophic”, and they were told Georgia would not walk or talk, and may not survive early childhood.

“This was my seven-day-old baby,” Louise says, remembering those early conversations. “I was hearing things I just couldn’t process.”

At the time, the family was living in Singapore. Louise had been working as a graphic designer, Mick in banking. Neither had experience with disability, and suddenly they were trying to navigate what Louise describes as a complex and highly medicalised system, making decisions they didn’t yet understand.

Specialists, medical procedures, investigations, tests, and more questions than answers defined Georgia’s early days. Then, through a chance connection, the family met a paediatric physiotherapist who approached Georgia differently. There was still therapy, still clinical intent, but it was layered with warmth, play, and connection.

“Up until then, everything had felt very medical,” Louise says. “And then suddenly there was someone who just picked Georgia up, cuddled her, and said, ‘Let’s play!’” It was a small but significant moment, and it shifted Louise’s perspective, reframing what therapy could look and feel like for both child and parent.

Discovering NAPA

It was through other families that Louise first heard about a small therapy collective in Los Angeles, California: NAPA Centre.

At that stage, NAPA, which stands for Neurological and Physical Abilitation, was still developing. Louise remembers arriving and wondering whether they had made the right decision, describing it as “a big tin shed at the end of LAX airport.” But that uncertainty didn’t last long.

“There was a sense that everyone was working towards the same thing,” she says. Instead of separate appointments and disconnected goals, therapists worked together, building a shared plan around Georgia.

What makes NAPA different

NAPA’s model is built around intensive, individualised therapy. Rather than seeing a physiotherapist, occupational therapist, or speech therapist separately, children work with a coordinated team, with all disciplines collaborating around shared goals. Programs are tailored to each child, and the program is designed around what that particular child needs to work on, whether that’s mobility, communication, feeding, or a combination of all three.

A key part of the model is intensity. NAPA is best known for its intensive therapy blocks, which typically run over several weeks, with children attending daily sessions that can last for multiple hours. The approach is based on repetition and consistency, giving children the opportunity to practise skills frequently and build on them over a concentrated period of time.

But just as important as the structure is how the therapy is delivered. Sessions are designed to be engaging and playful, even when the work itself is physically and cognitively demanding. For Louise, that balance between challenge and enjoyment was one of the things that stood out early on for Georgia. “It didn’t feel like therapy in the traditional sense,” she says. “There was still hard work, but it was wrapped in play.”

Bringing NAPA to Australia

As the Conn family returned to NAPA again and again, Louise began to see both the impact of the model and the gap it revealed. Families were travelling long distances to access therapy, often at significant cost, because there was nothing comparable closer to home.

While in Singapore, she began hosting informal intensive programs, bringing therapists over and running what became known as “pop-ups”, where families could come together to access the same model of care she had found overseas. Over time, those pop-ups extended to Australia, where demand quickly became clear.

“We knew we couldn’t keep doing this as a temporary solution,” Louise says. “Families needed something consistent.”

Having moved back to Australia by then, Louise and her family became co-owners of NAPA Australia in 2015. A year later, the first permanent Australian clinic opened in Lane Cove, on Sydney’s lower North Shore.

It was not a straightforward process. The model was still relatively unknown in Australia, and the team was building something that didn’t yet have an established place in the system. Early clinicians took a leap of faith, joining a service that was still taking shape, while pop-up programs continued to run alongside the development of a permanent base.

What they were building was not just a clinic, but a different way of delivering therapy. One that brought disciplines together, worked intensively, and placed families at the centre of the process.

From parent to founder

Today, Louise is Director of Client Services at NAPA Centre Australia, working at the intersection of families and clinicians and helping shape how therapy is delivered across the organisation. Her role is grounded in lived experience, and reflects years spent navigating therapy systems as a parent, travelling internationally for care, and learning what works in practice.

A core part of her approach is partnership. “Parents have to be equal in this,” she says. “You can’t design therapy around a child without understanding their family.”

Who NAPA is for

NAPA now has locations in Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane, and works with children and young people with a wide range of neurological and developmental conditions, including cerebral palsy, genetic conditions, developmental delay, and acquired brain injury. Many families come to NAPA after trying other therapy pathways, often looking for a more coordinated or intensive approach.

Access looks different for every family. Some attend intensive programs a few times a year, while others combine intensives with ongoing weekly therapy. Programs are goal-based, and families are closely involved in setting those goals and understanding how to continue progress at home.

That partnership is central to the model. At the end of an intensive block, therapists work with parents and caregivers to develop a home program, so that progress doesn’t stop when the sessions do.

For Louise, this is where the model connects most strongly with her own experience. “You’re not handing your child over and stepping back,” she says. “You’re part of it. You’re learning alongside them.”

Life beyond NAPA

Almost two decades on, Georgia’s diagnosis has not changed. But she is now 19, and the life built around that diagnosis looks very different from what Louise and Mick were first told to expect.

Louise describes Georgia as strong, engaged, and full of personality; someone who loves music, chocolate ice cream, and being part of the world around her. It is a life shaped with intention, one that supports her needs while still making space for joy.

Looking back, she is clear that the early prognosis did not define what was possible. “If I could go back to that version of myself,” Louise says, “I would tell her that things will be okay. There are so many moments of joy ahead… things you just can’t see at the beginning.”

It’s a message she now shares with other parents walking through NAPA’s doors for the first time, often carrying the same fear and uncertainty she once felt. “You don’t have to have it all figured out,” she says. “You just have to start. And you don’t have to do it on your own.”