Occupational Therapy for Children With Special Needs During Pandemic

Because of the current situation happening around the world, many have been affected and one of it is that face-to-face sessions for Occupational therapy have been a little difficult to maintain. This is why Occupational Therapists around the world have developed a more innovative approach to continue their practice by offering telehealth services.

To have a clearer understanding, here are the things you need to know with about this approach:

What is Telehealth?

Telehealth is the use of modern technologies to provide healthcare services to manage and monitor a patient’s physical, mental, and behavioral health using various applications or websites.

What is Occupational Therapy?

Occupational Therapy is a client-centered approach wherein an Occupational Therapy practitioner helps the patient to engage in their occupations by giving therapeutic activities. Occupational Therapists enable the patient to be more independent and functional with their everyday lives despite the patient’s illness, injury or disability.

What is the role of Occupational Therapy practitioners for children with special needs?

Occupational Therapists help children with special needs mainly by engaging them with various activities using play that will enhance their skills and help them in the growth and development of their physical, mental, and behavioral health. Play plays an important role when it comes to Occupational Therapy practitioners dealing with children because it is every child’s main occupation. With play, you get to target a lot of skills like motor skills, process skills, cognitive skills, social interaction skills, speech and language, and many more. These skills will help the child function and be more independent during their development in preparation for school and other occupations in the future.

Continuing Occupational Therapy Sessions

It’s been more than a year since Occupational Therapy sessions have moved to online sessions. Some still offer face-to-face sessions, however, the fear of many parents to go back to face-to-face sessions is really notable. This is why many parents still prefer to have Occupational Therapy sessions online today. It may seem a bit difficult for some at first, but throughout time parents have discovered how convenient and safe this is for them, especially now with our current situation. Telehealth services also opened a lot of opportunities for learning and understanding both with parents and Occupational Therapy practitioners because parents can now witness how each session works and can fully observe how their child is during sessions. This is really helpful to them because sometimes parents find it hard to fully understand what is going on with their child, and with telehealth service for Occupational therapy, they become more knowledgeable about their child’s condition and gain more ideas on what they can do for their child even if they are at home. 

 For Occupational Therapy practitioners, this helped them to further understand the child’s state in their homes and how the parents respond to their child in certain situations. 

The communication between the parents and Occupational Therapy practitioners became a lot more easier and open as well because during face-to-face sessions it is sometimes hard for parents to make time to sit down and talk to the therapist regularly because of their schedules. Telehealth service for Occupational therapy became a way for practitioners to finally have the time with the parents to talk and give more feedback about their child’s progress, point out on what more to improve, teach more techniques on how to handle their child during activities, and give more home instruction programs that are easier to monitor especially when tasks involve engaging in daily activities for their occupation since during face to face sessions, the practitioner gets to meet the child for about 2 to 3 times a week only and cannot fully monitor and observe the child in their homes.

With that, it is good to avail this kind of service to help you and your child more even if you are in the comfort of your home. Consult an online clinic in Singapore to avail telehealth services.