Therapies

SPEECH AND LANGUAGE, OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY and PHYSIO THERAPY UPDATE:

Barnet Children’s Integrated Therapies successfully transferred from NELFT to Whittington Health NHS Trust on 1^st February 2022. Marion Neuman is now in place as Head of Integrated Therapies in Barnet.

The CIT service remains dedicated and committed to provide support and provision for children and young people needing therapy in Barnet. The local authority are now delivering a mixed model of virtual and face-to-face therapy provision, ensuring the best outcomes are obtained to effectively meet the needs of children, young people and their families. This model has been developed and improved with collaborative input from the Barnet Parent Carer Forum.

To provide equitable support for children and young people across Barnet, the local authority has reviewed the optimal model to ensure cover across children in all schools including mainstream. The therapy provision in the ARPs is under a continuous review and covers:

· Review of children’s targets with the school staff

· Delivery of bespoke training that falls outside of the universal training program

· Contribution to emergency or priority annual reviews

· Modelling of a therapy approach to school staff

To ensure your child has access to the service talk to the Head of ARP or contact the services directly.

Here are a few ways to do so:

1. Contact therapists in the school if you have any queries about your child’s therapy.

2. The Barnet CIT Service has recently reintroduced drop-in sessions with a Physiotherapist, Occupational Therapist and Speech and Language Therapist. These are open to all families and school staff to meet with a therapist for clinical advice and are bookable by phoning the Barnet Single Point of Access (SPA) on Tel: 020 3316 8900 to book onto the next available appointment.

3. Universal training sessions are offered by Barnet Therapies on a range of topic relating to Speech and Language Therapy, Occupational Therapy and Physiotherapy. These sessions are all virtual and can be booked using the training menu on the local offer: https://www.barnetlocaloffer.org.uk/pages/parent-zone/whats-on-courses-and-support-groups-for-parents

4. If you have any questions or concerns about therapy provision in ARPs you can contact Sarah McClure, Clinical Lead Team at smcclure@nhs.net