Check out this great post from Heather at Growing Hands on Kids. She shared some great insight about the differences in school based and medical based occupational therapy services. Click Here for Post.
Here is a brief summary of her advantages and disadvantages of each service!
What are the some of the advantages vs. disadvantages of clinic-based OT?
Advantages:
- Can address a wide variety of tasks and environments
- Addresses a wide variety of diagnoses and conditions
- The child usually has a good amount of one on one time working with the therapist
- Really cool equipment and therapy rooms
- Cost
- Doctor directed-often the doctor does not have time to really determine all the child’s needs
- Usually have to attend outside of school hours, taking away from family time
What are the some of the advantages vs. disadvantages of school-based OT?
Advantages:
- During school
- No additional cost to parents
- Does not require a doctor’s prescription (Heather's edited note: Some states do require this, you will need to check with your individual state laws. As of this writing, the author's state of Colorado and also my state of Ohio do not require this).
- The student often has minimal to no time one on one with the therapist
- Therapy often provided in the classroom, hallways or whatever space is available
- Limited to areas affecting academics only
A Note from Willard OTs
At Willard, we make our best effort to provide highly specialized services for students in their natural context (the classroom) when appropriate to give children the best possible outcomes and generalization of skills. When needed, we provide services in an OT setting with 1:1 or small group activities to build foundational skills that can be then be generalized to the classroom. Our administrators work hard to provide us spaces to work to provide our services so we are not working in hallways or other spaces that are not optimal for therapy for students. We encourage teacher, para and parent participation in activities to build skills through repetition, exercise and functional practice during activities of daily living at home and school. Our goal is to direct our services toward deficits impacting academic performance. We work hard to give our students our best so they can be their best in the school setting!
- Casey, Brooke, and Katelyn