Children's Community Occupational Therapy
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The Occupational Therapy Service can help if your child is having difficulties with issues such as sleeping, eating and drinking, dressing, and other things related to self-care.
- Base: Kaleidoscope Centre
- Service Contact: LH.childrensOT@nhs.net
- Service Category: 2
- Address: Kaleidoscope Centre for Children and Young People, 32 Rushey Green, Catford, SE6 4JF
- Reception phone number: 020 3049 1337
- Service hours: Monday–Friday, 9am–5pm, excluding bank holidays
About the service
We provide a service to children and young people with physical needs, to help them develop skills for daily life.
Our occupational therapists work with children and young people aged 0-19 who have difficulties with functional activities at home or at nursery, school or college.
The Occupational Therapy Service can help if your child is having difficulties with any of the following:
- Sleeping
- Eating and drinking, or the mealtime routine
- Dressing and undressing
- Self-care and hygiene
- Using the toilet
- Using their hands to hold a pencil or other tools eg scissors or cutlery
- Handwriting, drawing, pre-writing skills
- Learning new skills
- Being calm, alert and able to work
Before contacting us, it may be useful to consider whether the behaviours you are seeing in your child are because:
- They cannot do the task
- They’re not at the right stage of development yet
- They’re affected by emotional or behavioural issues
- A sensory issue is causing the difficulty with the task
- They’re affected by social communication, understanding language and communication difficulties
Your appointment
A member of the Occupational Therapy Team may telephone you ahead of the appointment and ask you a series of questions. This means you don’t have to talk about your child while they are in the room and gives us more time to assess them in the appointment.
At the appointment, the occupational therapist might play games with your child and complete activities related to any difficulties highlighted on the referral form. We may also do assessments with your child to gain further information about why your child is experiencing difficulties.
The therapist will discuss the findings from the session with you and explain what may be causing your child’s difficulties. We will try to agree a plan with you around next steps and what help, if any, your child may need.
We may then give you strategies to support your child at home and school, or it may be that a further appointment is needed. The therapist will be working on specific areas of need with your child. Once these have been addressed, your child will not need to be seen on an ongoing basis and will be discharged.
Services available
For small, one-off queries and concerns, or if your child does not fulfil the criteria for referral, you can attend one of our drop-in clinics. These take place in person at the Kaleidoscope Centre with an occupational therapist.
We can deal with minor concerns such as a child’s ability to ties their shoelaces, use cutlery and putting socks on.
Our drop-in clinic is held on the first and third Thursday of the month between 9.30am and 12 noon. You don’t need to book an appointment, and your child must be registered with a Lewisham GP.
During the appointment, the occupational therapist may ask your child to do some activities such as drawing, jumping or threading beads. Your therapist will offer advice and suggest strategies that you can use across everyday activities.
With your permission, the therapist will share information with your child’s health visitor, GP and school or nursery, so that they know what advice has been given. Please let the therapist know if you do not want them to share this information.
Referrals
We can see children and young people from 0 - 19 years of age, who are still in full time education and who have a Lewisham GP if they meet the following criteria:
- They have a physical disability/condition or co-ordination difficulties, which have a significant impact on them taking part in everyday activities (self-care, school work or play)
- This does not include instances where learning or social communication difficulties are the main barriers to the child achieving age appropriate functional independence.
- Children and young people who attend Watergate and Greenvale special schools
- Children who have been discharged from the service within the past 12 months, who require a short-term follow up
- Children referred via the Special Educational Needs commissioned service or Brent Knoll School
Parents and carers can make direct referrals to the service. If your child fits the criteria, we will arrange an appointment.
Download the parent and carer referral form
Professionals can also refer to our service, with parental permission.
Download the referral form for professionals
We aim to see children and young people within 18 weeks of referral.
Support and resources
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Lewisham Council's Community Paediatric Occupational Therapy team can help with home equipment and adaptations. More information can be found on the Lewisham Council website.
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South London and Maudsley NHS Trust runs the Children and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) Occupational Therapy Service. Further information can be found on the SLAM Trust website.
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The Royal College of Occupational Therapy website gives additional information on the different types of occupational therapy services for children and young people.