What is Occupational Therapy?
Occupational therapy is a client-centred health profession concerned with promoting health and well being through occupation. The primary goal of occupational therapy is to enable people to participate in the activities of everyday life. Occupational therapists achieve this outcome by working with people and communities to enhance their ability to engage in the occupations they want to, need to, or are expected to do, or by modifying the occupation or the environment to better support their occupational engagementª.
For children, this can mean things like playing and interacting with others through to learning and school based tasks as well as understanding ourselves and developing our independence as we work towards being a young adult.
ªOccupational therapy Australia
Can Occupational Therapy help my child?
Does your child have difficulties with any of the following?
- Fine motor skills
- Gross motor skills
- Handwriting
- Social skills
- Play skills
- Sensory processing
- Learning difficulties
- Feeding difficulties
- Emotional difficulties
- Challenging behaviours
- Self-care (toileting, dressing, organisation, and others)
- School transitions
- Community skills
RiverRun PTS can help – please contact us to discuss any difficulties you may be having and how we might be able to help.
The OT Process
Exploring engaging Occupational Therapy support can be exciting, but also daunting, particularly if you are new to working with allied health professionals with your family. To help you get started, the flowchart below shows a “typical” process from referral through to individualised therapy support. It should be noted that a GP/paediatrician referral is not required to access our services – self-referrals or school-based referrals are more than welcome at RiverRun PTS.
Not all of our supports follow this process exactly, for example if you are needing an assessment only, or if you have already been receiving Occupational Therapy supports elsewhere, so our team will work with you to determine the process that is best for you.
RiverRun’s Approach
Our sessions and approach is tailored to the needs of your child/young person and family. We bring the insights of your child or young person, and your own expertise, skills, and resources, together with the skills of our therapists to create meaningful goals and a pathway through supports that will help you and your child/young person to feel empowered.
Sessions can happen in multiple places:
- At home
- At school/kindergarten
- The local community
- One of our two clinic spaces
Sessions can also happen individually with your child/family and the therapist, in pairs with another child/young person, or in small groups. We frequently also hold sessions just with the caregivers and the therapist to support your journey as caregivers and how you can take what is being created in OT sessions, into your daily lives.
We use your child/young person’s strengths and interests to engage with them in meaningful learning and skill development. This means that sessions may be full of play, deep thinking and problem solving, or anything in between.
We use a neuro-affirming approach to supports that cultivates confidence for the child/young person in their culture, gender, sexuality, and neuro-profile.