About Occupational Therapy

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.
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