COVID-19 – A Time of Change and Adaptability
By Katy Hands, 1 August 2020
Katy Hands, senior paediatric occupational therapist from the Birmingham Community Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust tells us how she has been adapting to the changes which the COVID-19 restrictions have brought to clinical practice.
In the Birmingham Community Healthcare Paediatric Occupational Therapy service, sensory difficulties contribute to almost half of the referrals. The service recognises the important contribution of using sensory integration informed practice and includes team members with a variety of skill levels including those beginning their journey within SI module 1 to Advanced Sensory Integration Practitioners. The service is delivered using a tiered model of universal, targeted and specialist approaches. Within this model, a sensory pathway aims to provide families with practical information and strategies on how to support their child’s sensory difficulties that are having an impact on their activities of daily living. This support ranges from gaining information from an Occupational Therapist on our Children’s OT advice line within the universal tier, to providing specialist sensory assessment within the child’s home or school environment within the specialist tier.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, face-to-face contact with children and their families has been restricted. This has impacted upon the way in which the service is able to deliver services to families across the city. A key element to the sensory pathway is the provision of a sensory workshop which is delivered to families that have been referred to the service due to their child experiencing sensory difficulties impacting upon their ADL’s. This workshop forms the targeted approach to the tiered model of service delivery and is very well attended by families with positive feedback on the advice and strategies provided. Unfortunately, due to the nature of the workshop being a small gathering, they are no longer able to be offered whilst restrictions remain in place. With concerns that families would not be receiving access to the support they require on the pathway through the service, the decision was made to adapt the workshop to be delivered in a virtual format. All families due to attend a face to face workshop were contacted and those happy to receive via virtual format were provided with pre workshop materials to provide them with an initial understanding of the sensory systems prior to attending the workshop where practical strategies and discussion could take place.
The workshop has now been provided as a trial via the WebEx platform, families provided positive feedback that they were still able to be in contact with the service and gain the information they required to support their children, especially whilst spending a lot of time at home. By providing the workshop in a live virtual format, as opposed to filming and sending a link, this allowed for valuable clinical discussion with families where questions often arose around the most effective ways to carry out strategies whilst at home. Additionally, being able to log into a virtual workshop allowed families to join that may previously have had difficulties with travel across the city or arranging childcare.
In addition to the workshop, as part of the universal offer within the service, a mini sensory series was filmed to provide the family with a basic understanding of sensory integration and how to support children with potential difficulties with modulation, particularly within the home environment with minimal access to equipment. These videos are now available on the trust webpages for families, schools and other professionals to access to gain insight into potential sensory difficulties prior to making a referral to the service.
Overall, although restrictions around face-to-face contact have caused disruptions to service delivery, the team have been grateful for the ability to continue to provide sensory integration informed practice via virtual platforms to support families across Birmingham.
Feedback from families:
“Today's workshop was fantastic. I have taken on-board advice on chewing and building up his motor skills and building up his muscles.”
“The virtual workshop was really good and was a good way of delivering the information to parents, when they cannot attend face-to-face meetings. Given the climate that we are in, this format worked really well and it gave me the opportunity to hear other parents’ point of view. Receiving the workshop as a virtual format could also become the norm, even when face to face contact is permitted. It takes the pressure off parents and is more convenient in terms of travelling etc”
You can access Birmingham Community Healthcare Paediatric Occupational Therapy's web page here.
