In the school context, an Occupational Therapist’s main focus is to support children to engage in their primary occupation of being a student. At Giant Steps, this is achieved through working within a transdisciplinary team to equip and support children to engage in all classroom, community, routine and playground activities.

Skills which Occupational Therapists bring to the transdisciplinary team:

• Assessment of occupational performance (e.g. handwriting, self-care skills), skills required for performance (e.g. gross and fine motor, cognitive) and sensory processing
• Goal setting
• Development and implementation of programs and strategies to improve skills for participation
• Environmental modification to enable participation
• Addressing the emotional and sensory needs of individual students

At Giant Steps, Occupational Therapists work with classroom teams to support each student in three different ways.  Whilst different in style, each way is focussed on sharing knowledge with the whole team. This facilitates skill development for staff members outside of their specialisation, ultimately strengthening all programs at Giant Steps.

• Demonstration – This is where an Occupational Therapist will take a leading role in developing and implementing a group or individual program. Once established the therapist will focus on ensuring information related to the program is shared amongst the team to enable other team members to complement and/or take over the program.
• Collaboration – This is where a therapist will develop a program with a teacher or other therapist ‘from the ground up’. This provides an opportunity for therapists and teachers to contribute their specialised skills to a program whilst learning from each other.
• Consultation – This is where therapists make recommendations for classes and individual programs based on assessment and observation. Where required, therapists will demonstrate how to implement strategies and work with teachers to ensure the recommendations are able to be managed within the classroom environment.

Occupational Therapists also play a key role in supporting families. This is achieved through regular communication with families concerning goals for their child, successes and challenges at home and school and recommended strategies for success.  Ensuring generalisation of skills across all environments is a key focus for Occupational Therapists as this allows students to engage fully in activities at home, school and in the broader community.