Every day, Occupational Therapists work with people to make changes, both big and small, which improve their lives.
Occupational Therapy Week 2019, 4th – 10th November, kickstarted the Royal College of OT’s campaign Small Change, Big Impact; those changes that may seem small, but have a powerful impact.
Every day we celebrate small changes with the children, young adults and families we see and sometimes we need to step back and appreciate the big impact they have. We wanted to showcase the impact and value of Occupational Therapy.
As part of OT week 2019, we shouted about all things OT on social media, shared our Small Change Big Impact Stories and Case Studies and held our first ever Peer Group meeting for independent health care professionals where we focussed on understanding what our client’s occupations are and what challenges we face.
Here is just one of our case studies highlighting the changes we’ve seen with the children we see:
Challenge: A pre-school child with Autism was struggling to engage in any focussed tasks at pre-school preferring to run around. The staff were using a sensory diet but as soon as the calming activities finished, they found he was overstimulated again.
Change: I recommended that the family trialled a compression vest under his clothing for pre-school to provide him with tactile and proprioceptive input to the body that can modulate his sensory needs.
Impact: Within one week, pre-school remarked what a change they had seen in the child’s attention and behaviour. He was engaging in short 1:1 sessions with staff and needing less time outside running up and down.
During the week, over 610 Royal College of Occupational Therapy members shared their stories of Small Change, Big Impact on the interactive story wall if you’d like to check them out. Can you spot any of us?
Look out for our own stories shared on social media and up in our HQ – these show the broad range of changes our own staff are making that are achieving a powerful impact with your children and families.