Starting secondary school and leaving school to progress to education, training or employment at 16 or 18 are important transition points for children and young people with SEND and their families. Achieving for Children provides help and support with the process of Preparing for Adulthood as part of their local offer.
If your child has an EHCP their link therapist will work with school staff to support them through these points of transition. Our transition pathways, which describe our role in the process are here:
Our therapists work closely with the mainstream schools in the Richmond Borough to provide advice and strategies to the adults supporting children with additional needs. We tailor our recommendations so that they can be delivered using the ordinarily available provision within the school. Please see the Ordinarily Available Provision document to learn more about this.
The Occupational Therapy Team have created the Mainstream Resource Pack and the Sensory Processing Resource Pack for the benefit of teachers, parents and carers who are supporting children with additional needs. They provide general advice and strategies that can be used to support the development of motor skills, self-care skills, and sensory processing abilities.
The Mainstream Resource Pack has been shared with all the mainstream school settings across the Richmond borough - this has been separated into three parts to make it more easily accessible:
The sensory processing resource pack aims to help parents, carers and educators identify sensory differences, and provide strategies that can be implemented into your child's daily routine.
The early years from age 0-5 are a crucial time for developing the building blocks of the fine motor, gross motor and self-care skills that will take them into their school years. Please see the resources below for how you can support your child's development at home.
Mark making and prewriting skills
Postural control
Sensory regulation
Self-care
Sometimes, children need additional support when developing their fine motor, gross motor, self-care and sensory regulation skills. Below are some advice sheets that can be used at home to help your child build their skill set!
Fine motor skills:
Handwriting (see the Supporting Your Child with Handwriting tab for much more information):
Sensory regulation:
- Equipment-free sensory circuit activities
- Therapy ball activities
- Sensory Play
- Oral Motor Stimulation
- Heavy work and movement activities for schools/home
- See also the 'Sensory Processing Resource Pack' under the Occupational Therapy Resource Packs tab for more information.
Self-care:
Here are some ways to support an older child or teenager with sensory regulation and executive functioning difficulties.
- Classroom strategies for teenagers
- Difficulties with executive functioning
- Heavy work for the muscles - teenagers
- Secondary transition
See our Secondary Transition and Preparation for Adulthood tab for more information about how we can support your child into adolescence and adulthood.
Emotional regulation is something we all need to learn to effectively maintain our wellbeing. Young children with speech, language and communication difficulties can have challenges identifying and expressing their emotions using language. Zones of Regulation by Leah Kuyper uses a colour coded system to support students with this.
Zones of Regulation Explained - an advice sheet explaining The Zones of Regulation
Video resource - a video tutorial on Zones of Regulation
Emotions Choice Board - these emotion cards can be used to support children to identify how they are feeling
Inside Out Zones of Regulation - the Zones of Regulation with Disney’s ‘Inside Out’ Characters
Zones Tools - these cut out ‘Tools’ cards can be used to support students to identify ways they can re-regulate and get into the Green Zone.