Occupational Therapy Assessment

An Occupational Therapy assessment can be suggested by your child's teacher, another health care professional, a friend or family member. When an OT assessment is suggested it means someone has a concern about a part of your child's development. This can range from being something small to something more serious. An OT looks at a range of skills, helps identify the difficult areas and then find ways of making those difficult things easier. Children can be assessed through standardised and non standardised methods, depending on the child's difficulty, age and ability. An independent OT can diagnose Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD)/ Dyspraxia and dysgraphia. Although a lot of children do not meet criteria for a diagnosis, we identify and work with other difficulties that may arise from the assessment. Having an assessment completed can act as a baseline and goals can be made from this. Every child is different and the OT will discuss all options with you.

Steps to organising an OT assessment for your child:
1. Phone or email us and we can send out a parent questionnaire and a teacher questionnaire to you. You do not need a referral and can self refer your child yourself.

2. Ask the child's teacher to fill in their questionnaire.

3. Fill in the parent questionnaire.

4. Send both forms back to us along with any other assessments that have been complete by other professionals.

5. We will be in contact to book in two different appointments on separate days;
a. An assessment (2 hours)
b. A parent only session (50minutes).
The final report will be completed and sent out to you within three weeks of the parent only session.

6. If a second parent would like to attend the process and they can only make one day, it is advised that you make yourself available for the parent only session, preferably.

On the day of the assessment..

1. An Occupational Therapy assessment can take between 1.5-2 hours to complete. This can be done in one sitting or else this can be broken up into smaller chunks, if needed. The OT will make a judgement call on the day.

2. Wear something comfortable that the child can move around freely in.

3. What to bring;
a. Bring a copy book as an example of what their handwriting is like.
b. Bring a drink and a snack if you feel necessary.

4. Parents can attend the assessment if they would like to be present. Alternatively, if you feel you will be a distraction and the child is comfortable to complete the assessment on their own, you can choose to leave. We have a waiting room, or you can head away in your car. Wilton shopping centre is a 5-minute drive.

4. Payment can be made through cash, card or cheque.

5. The assessment is an enjoyable one. Although they are completing difficult tasks, the OT will make it fun and children leave happy.

The OT will typically complete 4 standardised assessments which look at;

Motor Skills
A movement assessment can look at a child's fine motor ability, their performance with ball skills, their balance, their core strength . Assessments are specifically designed to identify children with motor difficulty. The test scores provide information about how the child's motor performance compares to his or her peers and can provide an indication of the severity of the motor difficulties. This tool can also provide additional detail about the child's muscle tone, postural control, speed, bilateral coordination, hand use, grasp patterns, effort, attention and behaviour during task performance. Knowing scores can act as a baseline for intervention and gives both parents and OT the knowledge of what to work on

Visual Motor Integration
Visual motor integration is a difficulty of the visual and the motor systems not communicating properly. Firstly is important to figure out which s causing the difficulty and then work on the specific skill. Children who have difficulties in visual-motor integration may exhibit problems with participating in sports, eye hand coordination skills, eye-foot coordination skills, bilateral coordination, body awareness, copying visual information, reading, drawing, handwriting, lining up math problems, and speed of complete motor tasks, etc.

Handwriting
Handwriting assessments are used to analyse the speed and legibility of a child's handwriting. Standardised assessments identify words per minute in relation to national averages. This gives a more accurate description of why the child is struggling to write legibly and at a normal speed. This can then either require handwriting intervention or the use of assistive technology.
Sometimes a child might not be old enough to use a standardised assessment so the OT will observe how the child writes and what difficulties they are encountering. Difficulties often present when the child refuses to complete handwriting tasks but has no problem verbalising the answer,. Difficulties might be letter formation, size, pencil grip, low tone, fine motor difficulties, speed, difficulty with pressure etc

Visual Perception
Visual perception is the process of extracting and organising information, giving meaning to what we see. It is required to perform everyday tasks, such as reading, copying information from a board or understanding symbols. There are 7 components to visual perception including;
Eye-hand coordination
Figure ground
Visual discrimination
Position in space
Visual memory
Visual closure
Form constancy

We also observe the following...

Attention and concentration, engagement, confidence, frustration tolerance and behaviour.
Social skills, communication, independence, cooperation, self care, play and self awareness.
Sensory Integration: sight (visual), hearing (auditory), taste (gustatory), smell (olfactory), movement (vestibular), touch (tactile), body awareness (proprioceptive) and internal state of the body (interoception).
Mental health, self esteem, mood and emotional regulation
Posture, muscle tone, muscle & core strength, endurance, developmental delays
Ability to follow instruction, problem solving, decision making, cognition, speech and possible learning difficulties.