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.

Our Approach

Using A Team Approach to Therapy


In many situations, we utilise an Occupational Therapy and Therapy Assistant model to support you or your child. This provides a team approach around you or your child. If this is recommended for you, we will discuss this with you prior to your first session. Then, during your first session, you or your child will meet me, Kirsty, as your Occupational Therapist and you will also be allocated one of our amazing Therapy Assistants.


What are the benefits to this Occupational Therapy/Therapy Assistant Collaboration Model?


There are many benefits to having both an Occupational Therapist and a Therapy Assistant as part of your Therapy Team. Working with a Therapy Assistant allows for more frequent therapy sessions than with an Occupational Therapist alone, which can help your child practice skills and try out different strategies more often, leading to quicker progress. Additionally, since Therapy Assistants have a lower hourly rate than Occupational Therapists, your NDIS budget can be stretched further, offering more therapy without increasing costs. The Occupational Therapist closely supervises the Therapy Assistant, so your child gets high-quality support without the higher cost. 


How does an Occupational Therapy/Therapy Assistant Collaboration Model work?


Once the goals for therapy have been established, I will complete a series of sessions with you or your child to get the know you or them and to complete some of the additional baseline assessments. Once I determine the most appropriate strategies or approaches to support you or your child and develop a Therapy Plan, you will start therapy sessions your Therapy Assistant.


The Occupational Therapist is responsible for overseeing the Therapy Assistant's work and ensuring that activities are meeting the child’s skill development. To keep things running smoothly, the Occupational Therapist and Therapy Assistant meet every two sessions to discuss your child’s progress and adjust the Therapy Plan if needed. The Occupational Therapist will also review your child’s progress with the Therapy Assistant at least every 10 sessions to check in on goals and make any necessary changes. 


Where do sessions take place?


Sessions can be conducted:


  • At the Function Centre - we have a centre equipped with different rooms, different activities and a fully equipped sensory room to help build new skills
  • In your home - we can run the sessions in your home where the child is in a familiar environment
  • At the child's childcare centre or school - this can assist your child to function at their optimum level within their learning environment

Paediatric Occupational Therapy

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.



What can an Occupational Therapist help my child with?

  • Fine motor tasks (writing with a pencil, using scissors)
  • Gross motor tasks (crawling, running, jumping)
  • Balance and coordination (sitting straight in a chair, kicking a ball)
  • Self-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:

  • Self-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.


Both the Occupational Therapist and Occupational Therapy Assistant will 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.


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 seeking someone with experience and proven success in obtaining optimal funding is required, when writing FCAs.


What is a Supported Independent Living Assessment?


Supported Independent Living (SIL) assessments are sometimes requested by the NDIS to help determine the level of support someone with high support needs requires. To be eligible for Supported Independent Living (SIL), an individual needs to require active disability support for 24 hours per day to complete daily activities and the need for overnight support. To determine this, NDIA may request a SIL assessment.


What is a Home and Living Assessment?


A Home and Living Assessment covers the same information as a Functional Capacity Assessment, but it dives deeper into your support needs. Instead of focusing on your functional capacity and the supports that you require, a Home and Living assessment also explores what type of accommodation is most suitable for your care needs and explores different models of supports within NDIS that would best suit you. In some situations, a SIL assessment may be incorporated into the Home and Living Assessment.


It takes a lot of time to develop a really good understanding about the participant so that decisions can be made regarding their housing and support requirements, then prove to the NDIA that the recommendations are reasonable and necessary. To do this, I will complete the same initial assessment as with the Functional Capacity Assessment and justify the recommendations using the assessment results. These reports are really long, but it is such a privilege to have a person share all aspects of their life with me, while building a strong relationship through this process.

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