OT for me
Children Services
We work with children of all ages and abilities. We support children who have developmental delays, autism spectrum disorder, learning difficulties, ADHD, Down Syndrome, and other genetic and chromosomal conditions, as well as children who may not have a formal diagnosis but are experiencing difficulties at home, day care, school or in the community.
SENSORY PROCESSING
We can help with a range of sensory processing difficulties including adjusting body speeds or arousal levels, creating sensory-friendly environments, reducing sensory sensitivities, increasing interoceptive awareness and tuning into our bodies and education on our sensory processing and how to implement helpful strategies throughout the day.
HANDWRITING
We can help with building strong foundations for handwriting including strength and endurance, pincer grip, bilateral coordination, visual perception, visual-motor integration, motor coordination, initiation, planning and organisation. We can support hand dominance and create a supportive physical and sensory environment. We also work on task-specific skills such as pencil grasp, pencil pressure, letter formation and letter placement.
EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONING
We can help with assessing executive functioning challenges, building insight into executive functioning difficulties and creating compensatory strategies that work for each child. We look at how we can incorporate task-specific supports at home and in the classroom and work with parents and teachers to develop strategies to support executive functioning difficulties and encourage independent use of compensatory strategies.
MOTOR SKILLS
We can help build gross motor skills (large muscles), fine motor skills (small muscles), motor coordination, and visual-motor skills (combining what we see with what we do). We work on these goals in fun, engaging games and work with parents to add motor skills activities within everyday routines.
SOCIAL SKILLS
We work on social skills from a neurodiversity affirming framework. . This includes working with the child to help them identify what they find difficult / want to work on. We help children to interpret different social situations and build their theory of mind (understanding how others think & feel). We also look at environmental adaptations to support social interactions.
EMOTIONAL REGULATION
We support emotional development and emotional regulation skills. This includes, identifying emotions, body clues, triggers and regulation tools. We use a triggers, feelings, behaviours framework to support the cognitive understanding of emotional regulation and use sensory and other strategies to create individualised regulation tools.
SELF-CARE
We can help with building skills to improve independence in self-care activities. This includes developing foundational skills and breaking down tasks to practice one component at a time. We set up creative and engaging ways to practice tasks and work with families to incorporate regular practice into everyday routines.
PLAY
Play is an important occupation for children, however children don't need to engage in all types of play to learn and develop. We can support children build skills and confidence in desired areas such as constructive play, imaginary play and games with rules. We can support children to throughout different play stages including parallel play, associative play and cooperative play.
GROWTH MINDSET
We can help with supporting the development of a growth mindset and resilience. Often shifting a fixed mindset to a growth mindset can be central to skill development. We help children see that mistakes help us to learn and grow and we can build skills through practice. We work with families and teachers to integrate growth mindset language and activities into daily routines.