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OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY
Focus on Growth
Developing skills to participate in meaningful and developmentally appropriate activities
Occupational Therapy Services
Occupational Therapist is a broad and diverse allied health support. Our primary goal is to support children and young people to be able to engage with their activities of daily living. These include self care, attending school, participating in hobbies, play, social skills and many other areas.
Our primary therapy areas are outlined below.
GROSS AND FINE MOTOR SKILLS
This refers to how we use our body. Fine Motor skills are utilising our hands for precise tasks (e.g. handwriting, cutting, using utensils). Gross motor skills are how we use our big muscles for powerful activities (e.g. Running, jumping, throwing)
ATTENTION AND BEHAVIOUR
Attention can be impacted on many things including our muscle tone, cognitive processing, vision, sensory needs and many more. We want to assess a young persons needs and support the environment around them to help them learn.
Young people use behaviours to get needs met. Most negative behaviours are an attempt to develop a connection, avoid a task that we feel is difficult or avoid something that makes us feel uncomfortable. We attempt to assess these needs and work with the support people to develop strategies to meet the young persons needs without the negative behaviours.
SENSORY PROCESSING AND SENSORY MODULATION
Sensory processing is how we interpret the world around us utilising our various sensory systems. This can be overwhelming, underwhelming and very difficult for some young people.
Sensory modulation refers to our therapeutic support in modifying the environment around a young person to help them cope with sensory information they are receiving.
PLAY AND SOCIAL SKILLS
Children learn through play. They learn skills to interact with others, how to share, how to use our imagination, how to problems solve, academic skills, concentration and much more.
Social skills are something we learn and we need to feel safe to get it wrong occasionally. Developing safe spaces and situations to develop social skills is very important.
VISUAL MOTOR INTEGRATION
Visual processing is import for most activities of our life. Hand eye/foot coordination for sports or exercise. Young people with Visual Motor integration concerns may be seen as clumsy, messy and may get injured regularly.
PROBLEM SOLVING AND DEVELOPING INDEPENDENCE
As children grow they develop their problem solving skills by watching adults, making mistakes, through praise and even getting in trouble.
Problem solving is important for developing independence. This helps with learning basic life tasks with food prep, hygiene, safety, etc.