Children’s Occupational Therapy: Service Criteria
The Occupational Therapy Service will take referrals to assess children’s sensory or motor difficulties and the impact of these on their daily living activities.
The NHS service is funded by Stockport NHS Clinical Commissioning Group to provide to children who:
· Are registered with a Stockport GP
· Aged between 0 and end of school year 11 (or attend Heaton special school)
And have
· an identified problem with their motor skills, either in quality of movement, or ability to carry out fine and/or gross motor skills which is significant in nature (severely impacting their everyday living)
NB if the child is in mainstream school and has completed two terms of Motor Skills United/other motor skills programme in school and their motor problems persist, they should then be referred.
· A physical disability with an impact upon their functional skills
· Ages and stages assessment in early years sows significant delay in milestones in Fine Motor and Activities of Daily Living Skills. (Under 5s only).
· Identified postural management and equipment needs.
· Equipment needs on discharge from hospital.
· Sensory Processing difficulties that impact significantly upon behaviour and interfere with their functional abilities i.e. severe over-reacting to sound and touch stimuli.
Referrals will be screened to check for appropriateness- i.e. that targeted interventions have been carried out by early years providers/schools prior to the referral.
Pre-school children should have accompanying information such as their Ages and stages profile.
School aged children should have accompanying information such as evidence of two terms of carrying out and information on the impact of Motor Skills United, access plan, other agencies reports, e.g. Educational Psychology, Sensory Service, Behaviour Support Service etc.
Pre-school Children
Pre-school children will be seen by the services based at the child development Unit at Tree House Stepping Hill Hospital. They may be seen at this site in an early years setting or at home.
School age children will be invited to an assessment at The Children’s Centre Beckwith House Stockport.
Treatment Criteria
Follow up advice / intervention may be in the form of advice/programme carried out by parents / education staff or direct therapy in groups or individually with a therapist or assistant.
Direct intervention from an OT will only occur where the child or young person has specific functional difficulties which have a significant impact on the development of play/ self-care skills and where there is potential for change through OT activities.
The NHS will provide OT where the outcome is a health need e.g. to reduce pain, reduce risk of deformity support function of activities of daily living.
Where the outcome is related to educational needs this falls under the duty of education and the OT service will work with schools/ Special education Needs team to meet these needs, e.g equipment in schools, advising on programmes to develop hand writing skills.
.
Discharge Criteria
A child/young person will be discharged from the service when:
· Intervention is not indicated following assessment as the child is not experiencing significant functional difficulties.
· The problem has resolved
· The child/young person has reached the goals of treatment or is functioning at an optimum level, and no further intervention will ‘add value’ over and above their educational activities.
· The child moves out of area and is transferred to other services as appropriate.
· Where the young person reaches the maximum age limit for the service. (See referral criteria)
· Consent for treatment is withdrawn or discharge from the service is requested provided there are no safeguarding concerns around this.
· The child/parent/carer does not attend an initial assessment and there are not significant safeguarding concerns
· There is non compliance with treatment recommendations (safeguarding issues will always be considered before discharge).