Occupational Therapy News OTnews May 2020 | Page 15

COVID-19 FEATURE Supporting families across Camden While many occupational therapists in the paediatric therapy team at the Royal Free London NHS Trust have been redeployed to intensive care or A&E and assisting paediatricians with baby discharge exams, many others in the team have been working hard to maintain essential services for our many vulnerable and complex children and their families across Camden.  Occupational therapists have maintained communication with these families, reaching out to parents, carers and teachers to provide advice, support and resources by phone or video consultation. The team responded quickly to school closures by putting together a list of helpful links and activities, and they have also been sharing the RCOT top tips.  A tiered approach to supporting children in Birmingham Occupational therapists at Birmingham Community Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust have quickly adapted the workshops they would normally deliver in person for the videoconferencing app Webex. The four workshops cover restricted diets, sensory needs, movement difficulties and developing independence for children with global delay to help them with life skills. Jenny Gregory, professional clinical lead in occupational therapy at the trust, said: ‘When I first called the parents about the workshops they thought I was going to cancel, so when I said we would do this new approach, they were keen to try.’ The workshops have been altered for their online versions – the four-hour sensory workshop, for example, has been changed to allow families to do some reading before a shorter online session focusing on strategies. Parents have welcomed the online workshops, and they are certain to continue after the end of social distancing because of the benefits to parents in saved transport time and childcare issues. ‘Being on video means a parent can just step out of work to do the workshop rather than travelling across Birmingham,’ says Jenny. ‘We’ll continue to have in-person workshops but we are now including a paragraph in our opt-in letters about virtual workshops for the future.’ While the workshops offer a specialist approach to support families, the team implemented a tiered model of practice last September, and offer a universal service too. That includes an advice line to support families, and also newly-launched videos on the website to explain how parents can create environments that support their child’s sensory needs. The videos are available at: www.bhamcommunity.nhs. uk/child-OT-videos. For more information on the work in Birmingham, email: [email protected]. Parent workshops have been run via webinar and have been very successful with good uptake so the frequency of these has been increased. Workshops are followed up with individual phone or video coaching conversations.  The paediatric occupational therapy team is also running some Cognitive Orientation to Occupational Performance (CO-OP) sessions, delivering the problem-solving intervention approach via Zoom, and offering one-to-one sessions instead of their usual group activities during the recent holiday period.  The team also made the decision to continue to offer education, health and care plan (EHCP) assessments via video link, whenever that is possible and practical, and to undertake statutory work such as annual reviews remotely. Finding the right information for families at a children’s hospice Katy Fox works as an occupational therapist at the Claire House Children’s Hospice on the Wirral. The 10-bed hospice is not currently providing planned care or respite care but continues to provide emergency respite care, and end of life care and services for the estimated 300 children and families it works with. Katy is at the hospice in person one day a week, and is spending the rest of the time supporting families from home. She has focused her efforts on providing information to families: that includes a new dedicated part of the hospice’s website with useful information that she has found or developed herself, and a weekly video on a parent’s private Facebook group on Sensory Sunday, demonstrating play ideas that can be replicated at home. ‘Families feel so overwhelmed right now that you have to pick what’s best for them and not send too much information that can really add to their stress. It’s not always the case that more is best,’ says Katy. She is also offering support for referrals by email and telephone, with sensory challenges and postural support among the topics that come up. ‘Some requests are about equipment,’ she says. ‘It might not be us that can directly deal with them but we can help signpost them, as they often see us as the key link.’ And as well as directly supporting families, she has worked to develop more staff resources that they can use to aid their own work. That includes resources on sensory processing, another on babies, communication and regulation, and videoconferencing sessions to support the learning. ‘A lot of our care team are also working from home and are ready to come into the hospice when needed. These training resources help their learning and enable flexibility and remote working during this unpredictable time,’ says Katy. OTnews May 2020 15