Sensory Integration Education

Back in November 2021, when we launched the Association of Sensory Integration Practice (ASIP) as an inclusive community of practice, we knew there was a spark of something really good happening. In the 10 ensuing months of ASIP Membership, we’ve been elated with the calibre of clinicians, researchers and individuals with lived experience wanting to contribute to and support our exploration of SI research, knowledge and practice. 

Our diverse ASIP membership has considered these broad topic areas, from the perspective of their own particular clinical contexts:

• Play and Playfulness
• SI and the Impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences
• Supporting Autistic Adults
• SI When Fidelity Isn’t Always Possible
• SI and Anxiety

Here’s just a small slice of what we’ve been sharing and how ASIP Membership can support you, whatever your setting, level of SI experience or client group.

1. Glorious Guest Speakers Offering Insight and Inspiration

Kim Barthel, who trained under Jean Ayres, spoke exclusively to ASIP members on the ways in which ASI can be a crucial way to support clients with anxiety as part of a combined intervention strategy. 

Prof Teresa May-Benson spoke to the ASIP membership about the SAFE PLACE programme, which she created with Jane Koomar, to explore ways in which SI-trained clinicians could work jointly with psychologists to support clients impacted by trauma.

Hope Caracci, an OT and Program Manager for the American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA), presented a thought-provoking exclusive webinar around decision making and dosage for ASI and other sensory-based therapies.

Conor Eldred Earl talked about the autistic experience of play and playfulness. Conor is an autistic expert by experience and advocate and a beautifully eloquent and humorous speaker. 

Prof Karen Stagnitti, a world leader in play research for more than 30 years, answered ASIP Membership questions on play and assessment of developmental play.

2. Get it Straight From the Research Author

As well as considering the relevance of research to our own varied settings and practices during Journal Club live online sessions, we’ve found it incredibly useful to be able to hear directly from the research authors. Recently we’ve heard from:

• Sue Allen on her research into parent-focused coaching interventions
• Moyna Talcer on her paper exploring the sensory experiences of autistic mothers
• Suzie McGreevy about her integrative literature review on sensory-based interventions with adult and adolescent trauma survivors
  
  

3. Community Discussions Offering Supporting and New Perspectives

We wouldn’t be a community of practice without community - and our community discussions explode with insights, ideas and further questions after our guest speaker presentations and other videos. We really do foster a welcoming environment and it’s been lovely to see the blossoming levels of support and sharing of experiences. 

A Community That Supports and Shares

After having listened to Jerrod Brown’s podcast, All Things Sensory, on how clinicians should be vigilant for burnout and compassion fatigue, we discussed how we cope with this at work and shared ideas that we’d heard of or experienced:

“Self care is promoted in my workplace and there is always support available if someone needs to debrief in-the-moment.”

“There's an interesting article in the May edition of RCOT OT News , entitled "Opening a window on staff wellbeing". [...] All staff are given a 30 minute Wellbeing Window every week, and can decide if they need to open their wellbeing window and by how much.” 

“I saw the following book highly recommended and have just started reading [...]:

Trauma Stewardship: An Everyday Guide to Caring for Self While Caring for Others by Connie Burk and Laura van Dernoot Lipsky”

“I find checking in with myself before and after sessions, and scheduling in time for reflection are essential - particularly after challenging sessions!” 

Community Discussion That Goes a Level Deeper

ASIP Membership community offers the space to really pull apart issues and explore them beyond the ‘quick tips’. For example, we had a fantastic exploration of views and experiences after we watched Kelly Mahler suggesting a sequential, three-stage approach to working with clients who have experienced trauma targeting interoceptive skill building: co-regulation; connection with themselves; and, cognitive strategies to support regulation.

“I believe connection with the physical self is key to well being, alongside grounding. I do recommend Kelly's educational approaches but also consider activities like yoga within the context of a sound therapeutic relationship to add the co-regulation piece.”

“Kelly’s resources are great but need to be used in tandem with physical and/or grounding activities to encourage the connection between body and mind to assist with co-regulation. When considering work with trauma, I wonder whether there is scope for using these steps but in a non-linear manner?”

“I work with children, some who have attachment difficulties, so the co regulation piece plays a large part in my work with these clients.. I agree [...] about considering activities within the context of a sound therapeutic relationship. Co-regulation has always been where I have started but I can see the scope for flexibility in the manner the steps are used.”

“I work in a school for children with Autism, some of whom also have attachment difficulties and/or ACEs. I do a lot of training with teaching staff and always consider the co-regulation piece. Our universal provision in school also includes daily Sensory Circuits, regular movement breaks, sensory diets and Zones of Regulation, so a good combination of body work and cognitive strategies. I've also seen some really great progress with children where, through SI sessions, they have learnt a lot about their own ability to register and regulate their own bodies, and then we add on the cognitive piece using Zones of Regulation as an approach.”

“I work in adult mental health. I find this approach really interesting because if I look back on clients I have worked with from an SI perspective, I can see this is the process that I followed. However, I do not think it is linear - I think it is dependent on the client's presentation. The goal is always to facilitate the ability to self-regulate, but to achieve this we may need to work through the suggested stages out of order, and multiple times before this occurs. I like that Kelly Mahler has broken it down into clear process stages, but rather than being a stage to achieve, I think they are more like a venn diagram, with 'interoceptive skill development' being the ultimate goal.”

4. Journal Club: Getting You Comfortable With Applying Research

Not your average journal club, the ASIP Journal Club not only keeps your skills and knowledge up-to-date but also offers an opportunity to discuss, in a friendly informal environment, what this research really means for your own clinical practice.

In our July group meeting, we worked through two open access research papers together, picking the brains of Dr Greg Kelly to understand the different kinds of research study that we were looking at, and how we could make judgements about how much weight to give to the authors’ conclusions without getting bogged down with the stats and jargon. It’s such good practice to do this together in a group, and it gives us more confidence to be able to critically assess the usefulness of some of the other research papers on our topic from the curated Additional Reading list.

5. Building Skills Together

The Skills Building group is a low-key, low-pressure way to build your confidence in getting your ASI theory into practice in your clinical setting, and to build up your knowledge base of ideas for activities and approaches for your clients. It's particularly useful if you don't have a lot of ASI-trained colleagues in your practice, and if you're working to support clients for whom full-on ASI is less possible. 

As well as live skills building workshops, ASIP Membership can access a growing library of short videos including:

Specialist Perspective videos from practitioners discussing how the ASIP topic works for their particular clinical context, for example

• Play and Playful Engagement in Restricted and Forensic Environments
• SI and ACES in Mental Health Settings
• Defining and Assessing Play in Mainstream Schools

Snack-size research skills videos including:

• What is Grounded Theory?
• What is Thematic Analysis?
• Using Google Scholar to Stay Updated
• Research Participants and Recruitment
• The 3 Es - Effectiveness, Efficacy and Efficiency
• Finding Relevant Research for Your Practice
• What is Critical Appraisal?
• Applicability of Research to Your Practice
  
  

6. Bonus Content You Won’t Find Anywhere Else

If you still have an appetite for more things sensory then we have bonus videos and resources for ASIP Membership. Our back catalogue includes all the presentations from our 2021 SIE Annual Conference (no longer publicly available), interviews with people like Dr Heather Kuhaneck and Dr Varleisha Gibbs, advice from experienced clinicians etc.

7. Maximising Your CPD Spend With Discounted Courses

As part of your ASIP Membership, you will enjoy 10% off all of SIE’s short CPD courses - helping you push that training budget even further. 

So if you’re feeling you’ve missed out, then consider joining ASIP today and you can access all these interviews and resources as part of the ever-growing ASIP catalogue. Our upcoming ASIP topic is SI and Outdoors.