Scope
This discipline can help to assess and treat many difficulties including:
- Poor fine-motor skills (grasping, cutting, show-tying, utensil use).
- Poor playground skills (fear of climbing, low muscle tone, core weakness).
- Visual Perceptual difficulties.
- Poor handwriting skills.
- Difficulties with hand-eye coordination and balance.
- Dependence with daily living skills (self-care: bathing, tooth-brushing, dressing, self-feeding).
- Poor sensory processing / sensory integration (difficulties with proprioreception, interoception, the vestibular system, and the visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory [smell] and taste senses).
- Organisation skills (i.e. arranging one's body and environment to be able to carry out a task).
- Confidence.
- Trauma and attachment.
Format
Unless the patient has already been assessed by a suitable therapist, and you are able to share with us a set of current targets or an assessment report written within the last 6 months, an initial assessment is the first step. This would last approximately 1 hour and would be comprehensive. Afterwards, you would be given feedback, targets, strategies to achieve these targets, and, if you have opted for one, a formal written report. Reports are generally requested if the findings need to be shared with other professionals (e.g. the NHS, nursery, school, etc.).
In rare cases, a second appointment might be required to complete an assessment. If so, the first session would be charged at the assessment rate, and the second session at the therapy rate.
Following the assessment, clients are provided with advice as to whether or not therapy would be recommended in order to implement the programme of strategies created in the assessment.
Number of sessions
Clients are not obliged to take up therapy but, should they choose to do so, the number of therapy sessions required (and the frequency and length of each session) would be entirely dependent on the patient’s needs and age. However, it is fairly standard for a therapist to see a patient for 1 hour each week for 5 or 6 weeks, and to review progress at the end of that block.
Examples of interventions
This list is by no means exhaustive, and each Occupational Therapist has their own experience and skill-set, but interventions might include:
- DIR Floortime.
- Tomatis Listening Method.
- Astronaut Training Intervention.
- Tacpac.
- Ayers Sensory Integration.
- Social Thinking.
- Zones of Regulation.
- Write From The Start.
- Sensory Attachment Intervention.
- Masgutova Reflex Integration.
- Bobath approach.
- Alert Programme.
- Toe by Toe.
and more....
Fees
Fees in your area can be seen via this link:
https://theowltherapycentre.co.uk/fees-enquiry
Please note that we do not offer all disciplines in all locations, and in some areas we offer outreach visits only.