At Insightful Occupational Therapy, we focus on empowering children to build the skills they need for daily activities, social interactions, and achieving developmental milestones. Through engaging, play-based activities, children are supported in learning skills to increase participation or independence at home, in social interactions, and through participation in educational settings. Therapy uses a strengths-based approach using the child’s unique abilities to help them gain confidence, grow skills and actively engage in their world.
Individual Occupational Therapy supports
After many years of supporting people with profound physical and developmental disabilities, it has been a lovely change to return to my roots of providing direct therapy and interventions through a collaborative approach for children, teens and young adults. It is so rewarding joining each individual in celebrating their achievements as they take more control, increase their knowledge or grow their skills and independence.
I can't sway too far away from supporting people with high care needs - I still have a strong passion for manual handling and developing comprehensive documents to ensure that all people involved in the manual handling movements as safe as possible.
Paediatric Occupational Therapy
What can an Occupational Therapist help my child with?
- Fine motor skills: writing with a pencil, using scissors
- Gross motor skills: crawling, running, jumping
- Balance and coordination: sitting straight in a chair, kicking a ball
- Personal care tasks: brushing teeth, buttoning clothes, using the toilet
- Planning and problem solving: working out the best way to do a task
- Behaviour: learning appropriate ways to manage emotions, learning right from wrong
- Sensory processing: learning to calm down when over-excited, managing distractions in the classroom
- Increasing social connections and confidence
- Finding the best assistive technology: items to increase attention, wheelchairs
What can I expect during my child's first session?
A developmental questionnaire will be sent to the family to complete about the child prior to our first meeting. Once this is sent back, we will arrange our first session with you.
The first session will be completed with the Occupational Therapist, Occupational Therapy Assistant (if appropriate) and a parent or caregiver to develop a deeper understanding of the child's background, strengths, parent/caregiver concerns and goals. This is completed without the child present so that you can be open and honest about your child's concerns without you needing to be careful what you are saying in front of your child.
Life Skill Building for Teens
and Young Adults
Sometimes young people just need a bit of a boost to help them develop important life skills. We can support teens and young adults to build skills that are important for them to become functional adults. This can be done through individual sessions or through small group sessions.
What can an Occupational Therapy assist with for teens and young adults?
Life can be challenging for teens as the expectations for them to complete more tasks and increase their participation increases, but they may struggle to know how to do this without additional support. We can therefore work with the individual to support their growth in knowledge, participation and independence, depending on their goals and ability. Some of the tasks we can assist with includes:
- Personal care skills: personal hygiene and grooming, dressing appropriately for various situations, health and wellness management (medication routines, exercise)
- Domestic tasks: cooking, meal planning, housekeeping, laundering and cleaning skills
- Time management and organization skills: creating and following schedules, prioritizing tasks and managing deadlines, planning and organizing study or work areas
- Finance management: budgeting, needs versus wants, handling money responsibly, saving
- Social connection: engaging in conversations, conflict resolution, developing assertiveness and social confidence
- Self-advocacy: building neuro-affirming confidence and self-understanding
- Emotional regulation and coping strategies: identifying and managing emotions, developing healthy coping strategies for stress and anxiety, problem-solving and resilience-building
- Work readiness skills: developing routines, workplace behavior and professionalism
- Community access: using public transportation, community safety awareness, navigating community services and resources
- Decision-making and problem-solving: evaluating choices and making informed decisions, setting realistic goals and planning steps to achieve them
- Technology and digital literacy: basic computer and smartphone use, internet safety and managing online presence, understanding digital tools for work or study
What can I expect during my first Occupational Therapy session?
We will meet at a place we decide is most appropriate for you and Kirsty will ask you a serious of questions about your life. I will ask you what you do by yourself and what you receive assistance with. We will talk about what tasks are important for you to complete and what you might need to increase your participation or independence in daily tasks.
Following this, we will develop some goals and come up with a plan on how we can work together to help you achieve these goals.
Your Occupational Therapist and Occupational Therapy Assistant may be present during the first session to allow both people in your Occupational Therapy team to hear the information from you first hand.
Reports for NDIS
Occupational Therapists are often asked by the NDIA (National Disability Insurance Agency) to complete a report to assist them in making funding decisions for participants of the NDIS. The most common reports that are asked for are Functional Capacity Assessments, Supported Independent Living assessments and Home and Living Assessments.
These assessments are very comprehensive of your what you are able to do, what you want to be able to do and what you need help with.
** KIRSTY IS NOT ABLE TO ACCEPT A REFERRAL PURELY FOR NDIS REPORTING AT THIS STAGE **
What is a Functional Capacity Assessment?
Functional Capacity Assessments (FCAs) can be a vital tool in assisting the National Disability Agency (NDIA) to determine what supports and how much funding is included in a participant’s plan, based on the NDIA's reasonable and necessary criteria. A clear, detailed FCA can make the difference between an insufficient plan and a suitable plan, therefore I take time to get to know you, your strengths, interests, things you need more help with and what you would like to achieve in the future.
Manual Handling Plans
People with high physical needs can provide increased manual handling risks for support workers. To ensure that the safest manual handing movements are being utilised to protect the staff and the supported person, it is recommended that each person has a specific assessment completed and a Manual Handling Plan developed for each manual handling task.
Not all Occupational Therapists have the know-how to provide assessment, develop strategies, conduct support worker training and create detailed manual handling plans. But this is a real passion for me!
Having supported people with high physical support needs as a live-in carer while managing chronic pain, I understand first hand how important it is to look after your body when engaging in person-moving tasks. I have been completing manual handling assessments and developing Manual Handling Plans for individuals with high physical support needs for 10 years. Over this time I have developed a thorough manual handling assessment and a clear and easy-to-follow recommendation process.
“I think every person has their own identity and beauty. Everyone being different is what is really beautiful. If we were all the same, it would be boring.” – Tila Tequila
