Pediatric Occupational Therapy

After having reviewed your intake and consent forms, our administrative team will match your child with the most suitable Occupational Therapist (OT). This therapist will review the intake form and will have a 1:1 telephone consultation with the parent(s) to ask you more pertinent questions about the child’s issue(s) and his/her/their goals for therapy. They will also review and explain their role. This consultation will also help them better understand your child and avoid speaking about their struggles in front of them as well as to set up the assessment for success. At a separate appointment, the child will come into the clinic, at which time the OT will have prepared a variety of assessments as well as clinical observation skills and outcome measures that will be used during the session. This can sometimes include standardized testing. There may be some rapport building activities, a variety of structured and unstructured games, crafts, or other fun activities included depending on the needs for the assessment. The information collected from these activities will help your therapist to prepare an individualized and developmentally appropriate treatment plan for your child that will be shared with you at the end of that session. Depending on the complexity of the goals and your child’s needs, the OT may ask you to have a second telephone consultation to debrief about the assessment results that will help determine the best course of action for the therapy plan. Usually the second consultation is not necessary. At this time, with the family’s input, the OT will make their recommendation for the number, frequency and duration of sessions for follow up. The suggestions often include some activities to work on at home, some 1:1 sessions with the treating therapist, or possibly some follow up sessions with an Occupational Therapy Assistant (OTA). They might even suggest some reading resources, taking a specific workshop for the parent, or an OT based group class for the child.

Depending on what your child is coming to therapy for, your session will look a bit different. Sometimes the therapist will bring the child to the gym to work on strength, sensory integration activities (ie: swings, compression, etc) or motor planning and coordination activities. Other times, the therapist will bring games, crafts, writing, or other fine motor or feeding activities into the therapy room where they can work at a desk. Sessions really are individualized based on child's assessed goals, needs and interests, We do alot of what looks like 'playing' and the activities have been selected as they will engage the child and help them achieve their goals.

Depends. Several but not all health plans will cover OT services. Each provider offers a different plan so check with yours to find out.

Give us a call to talk about the right option for you. Sometimes after an initial assessment, your Occupational Therapy will be able to provide you with enough information to make a plan of care that you can work on at home on your own time. Usually having guidance along the way is more beneficial to the child though. Your Occupational Therapy may recommend one of our group programs which gives your child access to our services at a lesser cost because a few children are working together. Another option is to do follow up sessions with an Occupational Therapy Assistant (OTA) since these sessions cost less than they do with an Occupational Therapist. Our Occupational Therapist Assistants are well trained to carry out the Occupational Therapist’s plan of care to ensure continued support for your child.