– Occupational Therapy

Hello!

Welcome to The Sensory Approach Occupational Therapy.

My name is Brigid and I am the Occupational Therapist and director.

As the name suggests, The Sensory Approach’s therapeutic focus is on using the sensory system to enable clients to achieve their Occupational Therapy goals.

Below are a few frequently asked questions to help you understand my practice, and whether accessing my service would benefit you and your family.

What exactly is Occupational Therapy?

Occupational Therapists works with all of the things that occupy a persons time- their occupations. While we often think of occupations in the context of a job, an occupation is actually anything that we do in the day. Therefore, as an Occupational Therapist, my goal is to support clients and their caregivers with daily occupations that might be difficult as a result of sensory, physical, developmental, or psychological differences that might be currently impacting their lives.

So, how would this goal achieving occur?

To support clients to achieve goals, Occupational Therapists enable the three main areas of occupation. They are:

The person- this might include developing hand function, calming the sensory system, strengthening the core and other gross motor muscles, strengthening visual-spatial skills, or developing emotional regulation and resilience skills.
The occupation- this might include working with school staff to support them to modify educational tasks to a child’s ability; determining an appropriate wheelchair so a person with decreased mobility can move around independently; or supporting parents to modify their social interactions with their child with autism so that the child can engage and interact.
The environment- this might include modifying a toilet and organising rails so that a person can toilet themselves independently; working with teaching staff and educators to provide calming classroom spaces for children with sensory processing difficulties to regulate themselves; or supporting families to modify their dining environments to encourage the development of a more varied diet for children who are restricted in their food choices.

That sounds difficult to do in a clinic.

Absolutely, it is. Which is one of the many reasons that I, and research, believe that working in what’s called natural environments is the best way to achieve functional goals. People learn differently in different environments, meaning that a skill that might be achieved in the fabricated world of a therapy clinic may not able to be generalised to the home or education environments. My therapy practice, therefore, involves home, school, and community visits.

What therapy models do you use?

The therapy model used will depend highly on what the goals for therapy are. Some of the primary therapeutic models I implement are DIR Floortime; Sensory Integration; Bobath Normal Movement; Bimanual Therapy; Constraint-Induced Movement Therapy; and Family-centred Therapy.

But what would a therapy session look like?

With the millions of possible goals to achieve, there are millions of possible ways for a therapy session to occur. However, the one constant between all sessions will be that sessions will be based on play and joyful experiences; and that all sessions will involve modelling and teaching, alongside direct therapy.

Some examples of this modelling and teaching are:

Teaching clients how to understand their sensory system and manage their emotional regulation.
Modelling strategies and teaching parents how to decrease their child’s tantrums.
Modelling strategies and teaching educators about how to support the interactions of a child in their room.

In the context of my client’s lives, I am on the outer tier of importance. Therefore, it’s not only practically, but neurologically important that therapy strategies are continued in the home and community environments.

Practically speaking, the most frequently I would see a client would be once a week. Which is only a tiny fraction of the total time in that person’s life. Just like my guitar teacher told me during my ill-fated attempts to become the Next Big Thing, it doesn’t matter what I do in the lesson, it’s how much I practise that matters.

In the same way, it doesn’t matter what wonderful therapy outcomes we achieve during a therapy session (and there will be many). What matters is the other 166 hours in the week- when the client is practising the skill we are learning- and that practise can only be achieved by me teaching clients and caregivers problem-solving during our sessions.

For clients who are children, this might mean that a big part of one visit might be myself and their parents problem-solving how to implement a strategy successfully into their daily life.
For older children and adolescents, a session might involve them debriefing about their week for 80 percent of the visit- so that I can spend 20 percent of the session supporting them with ideas of how to problem solve the sensory and emotional regulation issues that have arisen from the discussion.
In the school setting, a small fraction of the session will be modelling strategies that will support the child’s goal, and the majority of the time will be spent discussing why I think those strategies matter for that client, and how those strategies might be achieved in that particular school and child’s environment.

Neurologically speaking, when a child’s primary caregivers interact with them, it causes different, and much stronger, brain chemistry than if it is just another person. The child’s caregivers matter chemically so much more than someone like me- a fun person who seems to randomly appear at semi-regular times- because they matter psychologically much more.

There are chemicals in our brains that help us to attach to other important people in our lives. When these attachments occur, they enable a child to learn and develop- because their favourite people in the world are teaching them- so why wouldn’t they?

Sometimes, particularly for children with developmental differences or disabilities, this developmental learning and attachment can be impacted by social, physical, or cognitive factors. One of my roles, therefore, is to provide strategies and ideas to support the child’s learning and attachment- and therefore their development.

But my life is already incredibly busy. I don’t have time to do therapy on top of everything else.

Absolutely. Which is why my job is to understand the client, their family, and their daily routines, so that I can support you to embed the strategies that will support the client into the day. As a therapist whose entire focus is on occupation, my goal is helping client’s achieve greater independence and function- which means that any strategies I provide should be making family and home life easier, rather than more stressful. Strategies are therefore regularly reviewed to ensure they are right for the client and their family.

How do we get the ball rolling?

If this seems like something that would be beneficial for you or your loved one/s, feel free to check out the contact page for ways to get in touch. I look forward to hearing from you.

Brigid