Therapist's Corner

Occupational therapists work with children to help them to achieve the daily tasks they want to, and the tasks they have to. For so many of our children, fine motor and handwriting tasks fall into the “have to” category. There has been a significant fall-off of these skills with our children’s increased exposure to technology. Occupational therapists have the specialist visual-motor and perceptual expertise to help your children with handwriting. This is why we have a therapists corner on our fine motor and handwriting website.

The therapists corner puts together the fine motor, pre-writing and handwriting resources they can draw on to assist your children. Children are usually referred for an occupational therapy assessment by a teacher, paediatrician or sometimes by the parent themselves. Your child’s occupational therapist will begin by taking a history and establishing what the nature of their presenting difficulties. The goal of an occupational therapy assessment is not to find a child and assess them to see if they have a difficulty. Once the assessment has been done, your child’s therapist may select activities for them from the therapists corner. It is the therapist’s job to identify the underlying reason for the functional difficulty the child is experiencing. If there is not presenting or functional problem, we really have no reason to be performing and in-depth assessment. If you assess anyone you will find a problem! Not one of us is perfect. What matters is that we are functional. We only need to asses a child if they are struggling with something and then we may pay a visit to the therapists corner.

Once your child has been assessed the occupational therapist will help you to understand why your child is struggling with certain tasks. They will then make recommendations as to the route you can take to address these. Sometimes individual occupational therapy will be recommended. Other times they may recommend a home programme to which they may add resources they found in the therapists corner. Sometimes they recommend both.