Occupational therapy (OT) funding supports some of the most meaningful, day-to-day gains we see, the kind that change how a child moves through their whole week. For some of the families we support, these improvements come from having all of a child’s support team – in this case their OT, family, school and paediatrician – all working from the same page.
We recently funded a block of OT sessions for a young kid working on emotional regulation, sensory processing, executive functioning, impulse control and frustration tolerance. They’d recently been diagnosed with multiple neurodiversities which helped make sense of what has been happening.
Through these OT sessions, they’ve built a much stronger grasp of the Zones of Regulation, and are getting better at naming what they’re feeling, noticing their own body cues, and reaching for strategies that help them settle. They’ve also made progress with flexible thinking, using a stop-think-act approach and learning to tell the difference between a small problem and one worth getting overwhelmed about.
These are huge gains for this child, and make their day-to-day so much more enjoyable for them.
Movement has been woven through their school day too, with structured breaks, heavy-work activities, and most recently a trial of a therapy band on their chair to help with attention and regulation. It’s support and learnings that the whole group can take
This exactly the kind of ongoing, practical support our funding is designed to make possible. We couldn’t help children in this way without the generosity of everyone who helps us, so thank you.
