Paediatric Occupational Therapy
About
Paediatric occupational therapists support children and young people to carry out activities they need, want, or are expected to do, but are prevented from doing due to impairments, injuries or developmental conditions.
About our service
Paediatric occupational therapists support children and young people (aged 0 - 18 years, or 19 years in full-time education in special schools) to carry out activities (or occupations) they need, want, or are expected to do, but are prevented from doing due to impairments, injuries or developmental conditions.
Paediatric occupational therapists can suggest alternative ways of carrying out activities. provide advice on learning new approaches and help children and young people develop their independence skills within activities of daily living.
Examples of Activities of Daily Living (ADLs):
- Self-Care: washing, dressing, feeding/eating, toileting, sleep
- Productivity: school based activities; writing, scissor use
- Leisure: participating in out of school groups, play based skills
The BCHC community paediatric occupational therapy service uses a tiered model approach to deliver services to children, young people and families within the Birmingham area.
- Universal: families and professionals are able to access our advice packs and information via our webpage and contact our Advice Line where they can speak directly with an Occupational Therapist
- Targeted: families will require a referral to our service to access our parent workshops; these include topics on feeding difficulties, sensory processing and motor difficulties.
- Specialist: families will require a referral to our service to access specialist support, this can be within the home, clinic or school setting.
Why would a referral be made?
Families and Education should have accessed and implemented universal strategies prior to a referral, these can be found in our ‘pre referral problem solving pack’ our ‘advice sheets on our webpage’ or through our ‘advice line’. Evidence of input of strategies used should be detailed clearly on the referral form.
Once the universal support or advice has been accessed and there are still ongoing difficulties for the child or young person, a referral can be completed. These difficulties will be impacting significantly on their performance skills in more than one area of daily activities.
If you are considering a re-referral into our service, please ensure you detail previous advice that has been implemented or if this is a new concern or difficulty for the child or young person.
Please visit our ‘referral button’ on our home page for further information around referring into the Community Paediatric Occupational Therapy Team, our referral form and pre referral problem solving pack.
