Assessment, Treatment
and Intervention
“We experience life through our senses.”
Winnie Dunn
Assessment and Consultation
Our assessment process is personalised to the specific aims and needs of each individual referral. We use a holistic approach, drawing from our skills and knowledge in a broad range of Occupational Therapy frameworks. Assessment may be required as a standalone, or a support element to existing therapeutic work.
Sometimes a parent or therapist may be unclear if a full assessment is right for a child, or there may be a specific issue that you would like to talk through with a therapist. In this case, we can offer a 1 hour consultation (charged at our hourly rate) at our clinic where parent and child can come and play in our Sensory Integration room and have an informal chat with a therapist. You might go away with some ideas of things to try at home or the therapist may refer on to another service. Sometimes a consultation will lead to a full assessment. If not, you are welcome to come back to us at any point in the future.
We accept self-referrals, and referrals from Parents, Schools, Local Authorities, and wider Professionals. Fostering or Adoption specific referrals must be received from the commissioning Social Work Department.
Assessment approaches may include the following;
- Sensory Integration and Sensory Processing assessments, including a combination of standardised measures and observations.
- Sensory Attachment Intervention assessments, based on profiling and interviews initially, followed by direct assessment and observation.
- Evaluation in Ayres Sensory Integration (EASI) is a reliable, fully standardised set of tests for assessing Sensory Integration functions in children. It evaluates how well children perceive and process sensory information.
- Functional Assessments for specific daily occupations, including the Assessment of Motor and Process Skills (AMPS).
- Eating and Mealtime observations
- Attachment-Informed Assessments including the Child Attachment & Play Assessment (CAPA), Marschak Interaction Method (MIM), Video Interactive Guidance (VIG)
Assessments may take place across a variety of settings; in the home, school, or other relevant location.
Sometimes with complex cases it is more appropriate to complete assessments indirectly, to reduce crowding of Professionals and services. The circumstances of each individual case will be considered at the point of accepting each referral.
Feedback from the assessments will be provided to all Key Adults and relevant Professionals involved. This might be using video footage and using written materials to support ongoing recommendations.
Treatment and Intervention
We offer a variety of treatment and intervention packages. These might take place in the home, nursery, school or college, or another appropriate setting.
Treatment and intervention packages may include;
- Sensory Integration Therapy
- Sensory Attachment Intervention
- The Just Right State (Child and Parent Protocol/ Adult Adolescent Protocol)
- Sequential Oral Sensory (SOS) Feeding
- TalkTools™ Oral Placement Therapy
- The Listening Program®
Typically, our intervention approaches are eclectic, combining the most useful and relevant aspects of different approaches in order to meet the specific needs of the child and their Key Adults.
Intervention will be implemented in a holistic and sequential manner. This means considering which approach would be most suitable to utilise developmentally. We also consider which elements of work need to be completed with the child or young person, and which with their parents or Key Adults. Therapy sessions are usually recorded using a camera to enable analysis and review.
Our Clinic
Our specialist therapeutic environment is adapted to the individual needs of each child and family we work with. It never looks the same for two children! We create a warm, welcoming, safe, and fun setting from which the child can engage in their therapeutic assessment or intervention – but as far as the child is concerned, they’re just having fun! We have a specialist Sensory Integration room, which enables us to deliver Ayres Sensory Integration Therapy (ASI), and this means we can easily adapt and change the room in whatever way works best for the child.