Occupational Therapy

Occupational Therapy (OT) strives to help children and young people enhance engagement and participation in their lives and achieve independence when carrying out everyday living tasks. These tasks can be divided into 3 main areas: self-care, play and school.

• Self-Care occupations are personal care activities such as getting changed, eating using cutlery, accessing the bathroom, and brushing teeth.

• Play occupations are fun leisure activities such as riding a bike, catching a ball, playing football and playing with toys at home.

• School occupations include engaging in learning tasks, completing handwriting activities, organising work on a page, using tools I.e., scissors and rulers and accessing the school environment.

Occupational therapy also supports children and young people who have difficulty engaging in functional activities if they have difficulty with their sensory processing. They may be over or under-responsive to information coming from the environment.

Attending school, helps children and young people to learn, build independence and socialise. Whilst most young people find participating in activities (or occupations) such as writing down their work, playing in the playground or navigating their way around the school manageable. For some students at Cleeve Meadow, these types of activities present as more of a challenge.

To support their students to become as independent as possible with their learning, Cleeve Meadow commissioned a qualified Occupational Therapist from the Oxleas NHS Foundation trust for one day a week to help meet the OT needs to their students.

The Occupational Therapist works in partnership with the young person, parent/carers and school through embedding strategies such as:

• Adapting the way, the task is completed

• Modifying small changes to the environment

• Recommending appropriate equipment

• Teaching the young person or staff new techniques to try

• Providing relevant training for school staff

• Targeted group sessions

• Individualised programmes to help developing young person’s core skills and abilities

• Provide specialist seating so the young person can successfully access table-top activities

If you wish to discuss your young person’s their function in the previous 3 areas, please do not hesitant to contact the schools Occupational Therapist, Jo Lillis via the Single Point Access (SPA), Specialist Children’s Service on Tel: 0203 004 0092. Alternatively speak to Cleeve Meadow and ask about OT input.