Paediatric Assessments and Intervention

JenBertoni

Hello,
I am Jen and I'm an OT working in Ontario, Canada. I am looking for best practice assessments and interventions for children with sensory disorders as well as gross and fine motor skills training. I have been out of clinical care for a couple of years now but am looking forward to working with babies and kids in a private practice setting. Any info would be appreciated. Thanks!

Devon Cochrane

Hi Jen, welcome back to clinical practice!

I'm a new therapist in pediatrics and have found the following resources useful for guidelines/evidence:
childdevelopment.ca
canchild.ca
For standardized assessments, some examples are BOT-2, MABC (for motor skills) and the Sensory Profile (for sensory processing), MFUN (for general function) all can be found from Pearson Clinical. MFUN is a good one because you can use portions of it informally to assess components.

Some other resources for intervention ideas:
Tools to Grow
OT Mom
*These sites don't provide a lot of evidence for intervention - but it's a good starting point for ideas/inspiration.

Because this is a new area for me I would love to hear if you find these resources helpful too - and if you come across any other ideas for intervention.

Esme

Hello Jen,

M-ABC2 is great to use for gross and fine motor assessment or individual components. Quick, easy to administer and to travel with and standardised with Z-scores / percentiles. Sensory Profile2 has online access and covers the whole spectrum from babies to adults (you allocate the appropriate questionnaire to the client). I use Ayres' Clinical Observations standard with all my assessments too as it helps identify possible underlying issues. Further training in Ayres Sensory Integration and the use of the SIPT has also been extremely valuable to understand the proven neurophysiological components influencing the areas you mentioned you are working in.

There are a wide variety of websites, blogs etc. with ideas and resources for therapy. The best one for me with regards to research and training (webinars and on-site attendance) and treatment is the Spiral Foundation http://thespiralfoundation.org/ Then you also have Tina Champagne http://www.ot-innovations.com/ with a huge amount or resources and Angie Voss https://au.pinterest.com/asensorylife/ for everyday, common-sense explanations and ideas for parents re sensory issues.

Other good resources include Your Therapy Source https://www.yourtherapysource.com/ and Pathways https://pathways.org/ - and many, many more...!

Don't re-invent the wheel - find and tap into established resources! It is so worth the while to pay for good training, membership, resources etc. - there is a reason it is not always free 🙂

Enjoy exploring and building your knowledge in this field - it is complex but super rewarding.

Esme
https://www.facebook.com/OTBunbury/

Esme

Hi again Jen 🙂

Just thought of other resources:
Check out the gross motor skills training program at CoordiKids http://coordikids.com/

And I frequently make use of sensory diets from Sensational Brain at https://www.sensationalbrain.com/ - they also have budget friendly, informative webinars.

Esmé 🙂

pamstephenson

Consider some of the occupation-focused assessments such as CAPE, PAC etc and also the GOAL