The goal of occupational therapy is to use purposeful, motivating, and meaningful activity to maximise a person’s potential and life satisfaction, with the focus on daily function.
Occupational Therapists can offer support for a range of needs including:
- Functional difficulties – Eating, sleeping and self care
- Emotional regulation – Anger, anxiety, irritability, outbursts and upset
- Social difficulties – Aggression, poor friendships, poor play skills
- Academic challenges – Attention and concentration, organisation and managing the environment
- Sensory needs – sensitivity to certain sensory experiences and their role in emotional regulation
Occupational Therapists are skilled at attuning to the needs of the individual and coming up with practical strategies to manage daily challenges within the home, school/work place and wider community. Input almost always focuses on the doing, an alternative to talking therapy.
How can I help?
Whilst advice and intervention will vary by individual, some of the key ways I can help include:
- Consider daily routines and their potential to support or inhibit function.
- Support emotional regulation and self regulation- which is the ability to respond to the ongoing demands of an experience and express and manage emotions appropriately.
- Support parents and carers to reflect on relationships and to think more about the process of supporting children to learn and regulate their emotions, which is known as co-regulation.
- Increase activity levels, focusing on an individuals interests and their social and emotional needs
- Environmental considerations/adaptations to support function, considering the physical, social and sensory demands.
- Support social skills; communication, sharing, turn taking, waiting and participating in groups
- Support cognitive skills; attention and concentration, planning, organisation and problem solving.
