Our paediatric team is led by an experienced and highly skilled paediatric occupational therapist and delivers first-rate assessments and treatments for children and young people, whether at home or school, and timed to meet the needs of all involved.
Following an initial assessment, we can offer treatment focused around step-by-step, achievable targets within a series of six-week time frames, to help boost a child’s confidence and allow regular reviews of the way forward - and ultimately to make them as independent as possible.
How can The OT Practice help my child?
Activities of Daily Living
Our therapy team can work with you, your child and/or their school to enable him or her to perform the day-to-day activities - such tasks as using cutlery, toileting, and dressing - that a child needs to grow in independence.
Movement and Coordination Difficulties
Many children struggle with activities such as walking, running, jumping and lifting objects, which involves coordinating the larger muscles of the body, and as they grow in the school environment these difficulties can seem highlighted against their peers.
The OT Practice’s therapists can work with your child at home and at school to develop all these skills.
Handwriting and Fine Motor Skills
Coordination of the muscles of the arm and hand is vital for writing and using everyday items such as scissors, toothbrushes and cutlery, as is the ability to do these things while processing visual information in order to, say, cut out a picture.
Our occupational therapists and physiotherapists are experts in motor control and movement, and we have recently incorporated the Handwriting Without Tears© programme into our six-week Write Away handwriting programme.
Hand Eye Co-ordination / Visual Perception
This refers to a child’s ability to cognitively process the visual information they perceive and to elicit a physical response i.e. copying information from a class room board. A child who has difficulties in this area will often present as struggling to organise their work neatly on a page (word boundaries), copying text, and remembering images.
Our skilled team can identify these underlying difficulties quickly and can teach home and school strategies to help rebuild your child’s classroom confidence.
Sensory Processing Difficulties
How a child processes and responds to sensory information – i.e. sight, sound, smell, taste and touch – can be reflected in their emotional reactions, and some children find activities as straightforward as putting on clothes distressing because it overloads their senses. Our therapists are skilled in helping children develop the ‘sensory integration’ necessary to cope in these circumstances.
Complex Health Needs
We appreciate that some children will come to us with more complex physical needs. Our experienced occupational therapists and physiotherapists can offer the following to these special children:
- Splinting
- Major and minor home adaptations
- Large and small equipment advice
- Advice on environmental control systems
