What is Occupational Therapy?

Occupational Therapy is concerned with helping children to participate in the interests and activities that are important to them.  These interests and activities (occupations) include the following:

• Self-Care Activities i.e. getting dressed, eating and sleeping

• Being Productive i.e. writing, organising belongings, and paying attention at school

• Engaging fully with Play and Leisure opportunities i.e. playing with friends, participating in sports, other activities and hobbies.

How Occupational Therapy Helps

Occupational Therapists help children to grow, thrive and reach their full potential by:

• Identifying the interests and activities they do well and those they find difficult.

• Determining the personal, environmental and task-specific factors that help or limit their ability to participate in interests and activities.

• Developing alternative ways of doing things, and by teaching new skills or adapting the environment around the child to make it easier for them to participate, have fun and achieve.

When a child is in care, the adverse experiences they have had in life can also give rise to additional difficulties in the areas of emotional regulation, sensory processing and with building relationships.  These challenges can impact children in care in their daily lives, both at home and in school, but again, Occupational Therapists can be helpful.

When assessing and working with children in care, we utilise trauma and attachment-informed approaches that help children by:

• Developing co-regulation strategies

• Building self-regulation tools

• Creating predictable routines

We also apply sensory integration techniques that help children to feel more in control of their bodies and emotions and use play as a relational tool to help parents and carers to respond to their children in a connection-focussed way.

Our Occupational Therapy Assessment and Support Service

We currently provide Occupational Therapy services to children aged 12 years and under.  Every service we provide is bespoke and designed to meet the unique needs of the child concerned, though most will involve the following elements:

• We carry out an assessment

• We provide feedback on that assessment – explaining our findings and the recommendations we have made.

• We provide a written report on our findings that includes our recommendations.

• Working with parents / carers, we introduce or develop the plans needed to support the implementation of our  recommendations.

• We provide training to parents / carers on how to implement the plans we have made.

If you would like to learn more about Enid Hutchins who delivers our Occupational Therapy services, please click here.

If you would like to to get in touch, please click here.