Helen McLoughlin

The type of organisation you work for: Charity

Your area of practice: Supporting children to achieve in school, supporting (NEET)young people into work or education.

Examples of assessments that you use:

Our assessments are all in house. They have been developed using a range of materials and tend to be completed over a 4-week (very ish) period. In schools and our after-school facility Observational Assessment is hugely valuable, bringing together the “eyes” of different professions and people working with the children. We use different mediums to gain information.

 

Do you find a model(s) of practice useful – if so can you provide examples:

A broad psychosocial approach is used. No specific OT model is used.

 

Types of interventions you carry out:

In schools our interventions can be FM strengthening, dexterity, co-ordination, handwriting, selfcare(dressing, eating etc) or GM balance, core stability, co-ordination. Friendship, social, anxiety, anger management, emotional intelligence, mindfulness.

After school provision they could be the same as above but also, sleep hygiene, diet, working with parents(parenting workshops, strategies, behaviour management) self-regulation.

With the young people lots of work around, routines, sleep hygiene, communication styles, self-awareness, personal hygiene, healthy eating, anxiety, stress, anger management, finance as well as practical support with registering with(GP, council) obtaining the documents you need (passport, ID docs, benefit details) CV writing, interview skills, applications for courses, jobs.

 

Do you use specific outcome measures?  Please provide examples:

For our OT and SaLT work we have individual Goals for each child/young person, we use TOMs as an overarching measure. All of our other teams are moving towards using GBOs and SDQs as an overarching measure.

 

Have you found relevant research to underpin your practice? Are there areas of research you feel are necessary?

There are so many areas. We are a needs based service, rather than diagnosis driven. I struggle to find any relevant research as predominantly research is still based in a medical model of having a condition which needs fixing….

Is there particular legislation, policy, guidelines that underpin your practice?

COT and HCPC documents, National Curriculum in schools. Five Ways to Wellbeing

Which other professionals do you work with? How do you feel occupational therapy has benefited your team?

We work predominantly with Teachers, Therapists, SaLTs, Social workers and specialist keyworkers. Occupational Therapy initially started in only one of our departments, we have developed roles in 3 of the 4 programmes which we run. The value which Occupational Therapy gives to the different teams has been reported to be – critical thinking about the children/young person,  reasoning abilities, breadth of analysis of information gathered at assessment, clear goals and communication.