Occupational Therapy & Speech Therapy for children with autism

Autism is considered a ‘social disorder’ where children need additional help to develop social interaction and communication that can be used across all environments. Often this is accompanied by restricted and repetitive behaviour. All of these characteristics then impact on daily functioning in multiply environments including home and academic institutions.

Occupational Therapy & Speech Therapy provide early intervention to address the social interaction and communication and subsequent functional life skills that are required across environments.

While the actual ‘therapy’ occurs in the purpose designed clinic and home setting (via home program), our Occupational Therapy and Speech Therapy team works closely with parents, teachers and other care-givers to implement strategies to help skill develop in child care, kindergarten and school environments.

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What is Occupational Therapy and what can it do for my child?

Occupational Therapy focuses on maximising children’s skills in life skills at home, kindy/school, social and play. Occupational Therapy helps children with Autism develop their abilities in:

• Table top skills – pencil skills, colouring, drawing, writing, scissor skills

• Whole body skills – running, jumping, hopping, skipping, table posture, ball skills

• Sensory Processing – which aids attention, behaviour and learning for social interaction and play

• Self Management – dressing, toileting, eating, sleeping, general organization and planning of self as well as of toys / learning resources.

 

What is Speech Therapy and what can it do for my child?

Speech Therapy helps children to understand and use language for social interaction, play, reading and writing.) Speech Therapy helps children with Autism develop their abilities in:

• Play and interaction – playing with toys and people; looking; listening and attention and early interaction skills

• Receptive language – understanding what words mean; understanding concepts, sentences and grammatical rules; understanding instructions and directions; understanding how to answer questions appropriately; reading comprehension

• Expressive language – saying words; linking words together; using appropriate grammar; telling stories; using language socially; writing

• Articulation and talking – listening and hearing speech sounds; saying sounds; linking sounds together into words and sentences; fluency and smoothness of speech; voice quality; phonological awareness skills (ie. understanding of sounds and how sounds got together to make words); sounding out words and spelling).

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