What is Occupational therapy?

This is the question that comes to mind if a child should bring a slip as a request for an assessment to be conducted. People often confuse it for other types of therapy and mainly confusing Occupational therapy with Physiotherapy or thinking it’s the same thing. The word occupation is cut from the word occupational. An occupation is an engagement or what we spend our time doing. These occupations vary from basic activities we do on a daily basis to instrumental activities from time to time. Therapy is anything that is done with the hope of improving and or maintaining the level of function. Occupational therapy is a form of rehabilitation that uses different activities that are relevant to the way people live to address the various challenges people face towards obtaining maximum level of functioning.

Who gets referred to Occupational Therapy and why?

To answer this question, it will be best to first answer this one, “What is the occupation of children?”. The answer to this is four simple words, school, play, sport and recreation. When a child is referred for Occupational Therapy, it indicates that there is an area in the child’s life that needs to improve or whose function needs continual monitoring. Every child that is not functioning to the best of their capabilities may need to be assessed and or get help from occupational therapy as this is the therapy that is holistic and looks at how that particular function is connected to all other functions. If an Occupational therapist is based at a school, the aim will be to give every child all the necessary support to succeed in all facets of occupations.

How long is a child kept in therapy?

Every child is different and after an individualised assessment, treatment goals are drawn up with the help of the whole team. The team comprises of, caregivers, other therapists and teachers. The best will be to start the child immediately and to make contact with the child frequently. With this arrangement, for most challenges, it may not take a long time. However, we do have children that may need the support for much longer and may depend on it to help them optimise their function. These children may be kept in therapy longer to ensure there is maintenance of the level of function obtained. The time varies from child to child depending with the level of skills obtained and the support system the child has.

What can I do as a parent or caregiver?

A support system is a network of people who provide an individual with practical or emotional support. As any of the above, you are in the best position to provide the support to learners who may be needing that support. The therapist usually makes contact with all involved carers to monitor the improvement from therapy and also to advice and give suggestions. In most cases, you have no need to get new things but use the same daily activities to help the learners in learning. What you will need is the right attitude as with some challenges, you may need to do the same thing multiple times before the learner is able to grasp the concept.