What is Occupational Therapy?
Occupation refers to all the tasks or activities that a person either:
• Wants to do (interests, hobbies, play)
• Has to do (e.g. eat, toilet, dress)
• Is expected to do (reading, writing, academics)
Occupational Therapy aims to help a person achieve success in their life occupations. It focuses on the main occupations of:
• School (e.g. writing, reading, fine motor skills, learning, attention)
• Home tasks (e.g. fitting in with family life, jobs, homework, getting self ready)
• Play (e.g. imaginative play, social interaction, gross motor skills)
• Self-care ( e.g. bathing, dressing, eating, cutlery use, organising self)
• Work (preparing a person to be able to effectively engage in the workplace)
Areas Addressed at Kid’s Matter’s Occupational Therapy
-
- Sensory Integration
- Autism
- Fine Motor Skills
- Gross Motor Skills
- Visual Perception
- Memory Issues
- Handwriting Difficulties
- School Readiness
- Play
- Eating issues
- Developmental Delays
- Self-care issues
- Toileting – encopresis/ enuresis/ delays
- Dressing
- Behaviour management
- Most other functional difficulties
How Occupational Therapy Will Help
The therapist carefully analyses the sensory, physical, cognitive and behavioural aspects causing the child to have difficulties in his/ her life occupations.
Intervention is then targeted at the weak areas to improve the underlying skills. Intervention looks at a combination of:
- Education of child and adult caregivers as to the reasons for the difficulties.
- Environmental modification where appropriate to help ensure that the child has the “just right” level of challenge to enable success.
- Remediation of the underlying skills through clinic treatment and/ or home and school programming.