Occupational Therapy
INTERDEPENDENCE AND SKILL BUILDING FOR INDEPENDENCE AND RESILIENCE
What is Occupational Therapy?
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What is Occupational Therapy? ♡
Occupational therapists help children succeed at their job of learning how to grow up and become their best selves, particularly when life circumstances, chronic conditions, or disorders make that job harder than it needs to be. They help evaluate and treat conditions by addressing areas for growth, including:
The aim of occupational therapy is to improve or reestablish a mind-body connection that’s specific to your child’s needs.
Outcomes of an individualized treatment plan may focus on:
Improved ability to complete daily living and school tasks
Improved physical coordination, balance, and motor skills
Improved mental and emotional regulation, with positive changes in behavior that come from that internal regulation
Improved sensory integration, with greater ability to respond and adapt to environmental changes
Services
The Ensemble Therapy team has a depth of understanding and heart that matches the years of experience they’ve devoted to their careers.
We have a variety of services and modalities to support your child:
Intake Session (Caregivers Only) - 30-45 minutes, $100
Occupational Therapy Initial Evaluation - 60-90 minutes, $300
Occupational Therapy Sessions - 45 minutes, $180
Caregiver Consultations (occur in our Sensory Playroom w/ child) - 45 minutes, $180
Occupational Therapy Re-Evaluation - 60-90 minutes, $240
School Observations / Consultations - 45 minutes, $215
OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY SESSIONS ARE AT OUR BERKMAN OFFICE LOCATION ONLY.
How do I know if my child needs Occupational Therapy?
All children need supportive environments and tools to flourish, but if yours experiences challenges that limit their ability to follow through on tasks related to daily life, an occupational therapy evaluation might offer a crucial roadmap of support they need (and for you to know how to support them).
As a starting place, here are some potential challenges that could point to a need for support if your child is regularly experiencing them:
Difficulties with self-care activities, hygiene, or getting dressed, including issues using zippers or buttons or tying shoes
Having a hard time holding and using utensils for eating, difficulty writing and hard-to-read handwriting
Difficulties with balance or body awareness, including frequently tripping or bumping into objects
Outsized emotional upset with sensory changes or changes in environment, or undersized emotional response to big stimulus or attempted interactions with adults or peers
Attention-related challenges, such as being intensely focused or highly distractible, having difficulty following directions, or having mental or emotional difficulty when transitioning from one activity to another
Showing high impulsivity or disregard for dangerous activities, or alternately, extreme caution or fear for daily activities
Being avoidant of or upset by sensory experiences like hair brushing or nail cutting
Our Occupational Therapists can support many chronic conditions and disabilities, as well as physical injuries or trauma recovery. Any circumstance where a child experiences difficulty navigating or performing routines or self-care can potentially benefit from occupational therapy.
By addressing daily living and skill building, occupational therapy at Ensemble Therapy offers a dedicated environment to evaluate and intentionally support your child’s ability to navigate life, whether they’re at school, at home, or in their community.
How does the process work?
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How does the process work? ♡
Step 1: 15-Minute Phone Consultation
First, we’ll have a free, 15-minute phone consultation with you to discuss your concerns and general observations at home, as well as any feedback you might have received from school, to determine if your child could positively benefit from occupational therapy. A referral from a physician may be required if your child has a specific medical condition or if the OT determines during the evaluation process that it is needed to ensure your child's safety and welfare.
Step 2: 45-MINUTE INITIAL CONSULTATION (CAREGIVERS ONLY)
We will go over detailed background information about your child and family, discuss potential aims of occupational therapy support, review practice policies, and set goals for your child’s therapeutic work. You’ll be asked about your child’s background, challenges, functional skills, and have the opportunity to ask questions.
Step 3: PRE-TREATMENT ASSESSMENTS
(ONE OR MORE SESSIONS)
The evaluation process is required to determine what areas of support your child could benefit from. To help prioritize what order we approach treatment, assessments may take more than one 60-minute session to be comprehensive. After discussing therapeutic goals, our therapists might consult with school personnel and/or other healthcare providers (primary care physician, psychologist, psychiatrist, neurologist, etc.), conduct an informal observation at school or home, and ask parents to complete assessment questionnaires.
In person at our Ensemble Therapy Berkman location, your child will be observed while they complete tasks to determine their current strengths and needs. Assessment modalities include BOT - 3, Sensory Processing Measure, Beery VMI, Peabody Developmental Motor Scales - 3, and DeCoste Writing Protocol.
Step 4: OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY
SESSIONS WITH YOUR CHILD
Sessions take place on a weekly basis for 45 minutes at our Ensemble Therapy Berkman location, where your child’s occupational therapist will create a safe environment for skill building based on an individualized plan with goals that determine support during and in between sessions. They’ll work to support your child’s emotional and physical development and enhance their functioning in life tasks through appropriate intervention strategies. These strategies may look like movement activities, specific exercises, games and play activities, fine and visual motor tasks, daily living skills, problem solving, or techniques to regulate the nervous system and assist with sensory processing.
Step 5: CAREGIVER CONSULTATIONS
Every 4-6 sessions, you’ll have an opportunity to discuss your child’s progress, their needs, and strategies for support at home during caregiver consultations.
Step 6: Follow-Up Recommendations
Some children may improve within a few months, while some treatment needs may take longer to resolve, updating goals with progress over time. The process is unique to each child, but initially you might expect your child to be in therapy for around 6 months (a total of 20 sessions) before we would suggest other follow-up recommendations.
These could be:
Continued OT services
Play therapy
Parent Coaching
School Observations
Psychological Testing
School Consultations
Family Therapy Sessions
Caregiver Workshops
Schedule a free 15-minute initial consultation.
Kim Strickland, OTR, ATP, M.S.
Kim is an Occupational Therapist who received her BA in Psychology from the University of Texas at Austin in 1992 and her MS in Occupational Therapy from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1994. She has worked in a variety of hospital settings including inpatient, outpatient, rehabilitation, mental health and a hospital for medically fragile children. She also has extensive experience as a school based therapist. She has a particular passion for using low tech and high tech strategies to assist those children who struggle with the writing process or who are emerging writers and for applying sensory strategies in the home, community and school settings to increase function and independence.
In her non-professional life she finds fulfillment in the joys of spending time with her two adult sons and new daughter-in-law, traveling with her husband, walking her dogs, reading, growing orchids, needlepointing, attending the theater and volunteering as a court appointed special advocate (CASA) for children who have been abused or neglected. She also has a fondness for silly puns and Broadway show tunes.
Why our approach to
Occupational Therapy works:
No child is the same, so how they develop, when they do, and the care they get along the way shouldn’t be the same either. We’re not basing support on external milestones for where a child “should be” in their development, because that criteria may offer a guideline, but it doesn’t speak to every circumstance. Our focus is on the realities you, your child, and your family face on a daily basis. We’re looking for the next piece of support that will be the most timely and useful to make those realities as easy as they can be.
To do that, we create a customized treatment plan based on the evaluation criteria that is specific to your child’s needs. Along the way, we track progress towards goals, adjust interventions based on your child’s development in real time, and help foster skills, structures, and systems for successful daily living.
With a background in child development, psychology, education, kinesiology, and biology, our approach meets your child where they are, human-to-human, while using research-based intervention strategies to cultivate life-long skills and habits to respond and adapt to the outside world. The relationship your child builds with their occupational therapist becomes a positive foundation for their own relationship with themselves and how they function, cope, and relate to the challenges they face as they grow.
