Developing our Sensory Occupational Therapist Service

7 June 2021

Following a joint commissioning exercise between Cheshire Clinical Commissioning Group and Cheshire East Council, three recurrent permanent occupational therapy (OT) posts have been commissioned to provide sensory OT services for children and young people across Cheshire East.

The commission of this service is following the highly effective and popular sensory processing OT pilot project that has taken place over the last two years. This sensory OT service is now in development, with East Cheshire NHS Trust and Central Cheshire Integrated Care Partnership working collaboratively to create a service that we are hoping to be operational by September.

The Service itself will follow the same 'tiered' approach to assessment and treatment as the pilot project did. We will be looking to offer universal training for education settings, parents and other health professionals as the first tier.

If the universal strategies that we share do not manage needs fully, then the child or young person can then be referred into the service for consideration of targeted workshops. These workshops will be occupation focused with our clinicians working with parents/carers and education staff around areas such as toileting, feeding, self-regulation skills (without the child present), and will take place over two sessions.

A care plan will then be developed to work on with the child and young person over a school term. If these strategies are again not enough to meet needs, then we will then consider specialist intervention, where one to one therapy assessment and therapy sessions can be completed within clinic/school/home over a set period of time, again whilst working alongside a care plan.

We are still very much in the planning phase but wanted to share this update. We will continue to keep everyone posted with regards to progress.

In the meantime, our sensory inclusion service is here to help. More information can be found on our Local Offer