Occupational Therapy News OTnews January 2019 | Page 27

CHILDREN’S SERVICES FEATURE The benefits have also been cost effective for parents. The children are provided with a free lunch at school, and there is always a variety of different foods available, which the children in question were not often accessing, so parents were providing lunch for them. Importantly, the group has had a positive impact on allowing and supporting the children to try to engage in lunchtime as an occupation with their peers to accommodate further opportunity to enhance social participation. We hope that as we continue, this will help to reduce food waste at lunchtime, if all children are accessing the lunch provided. On a universal level, making the catering menus accessible to the pupils appeared to reduce anxiety and support all pupils to access lunchtime. On an individual level, all pupils who were participating in the group were able to set themselves achievable goals with the therapists and this appeared to generally reduce anxieties when they were aware of what the options for lunch would be. we received included: ‘He doesn’t seem to be so worried about foods touching, which he did before’; and ‘He was so enthusiastic about the group and was disappointed when it was over.’ The group was also recognised by Ofsted in its residential provision inspection, where it said: ‘Young people are supported to understand how to lead healthy lifestyles’; and ‘Some young people are engaged in “Food Explorers” to try new types and textures of foods to help expand their diet’ (Ofsted 2018). An example of one goal set by a student was to put a small amount of plain pasta onto his plate at lunchtime. He set this goal because he was attending a residential trip in the summer and pasta was a common option for most meals. He achieved this by the end of the group; he was able to tolerate this on his plate and try it. in school. Whats next? We ran this group as a pilot study, and as a result of the positive outcomes we are now able to incorporate the group into the children’s timetabled occupational therapy time, to provide an integrated approach instead of taking the boys from their lessons,which was necessary for the trial. We are planning to provide this group each term with a different year group, in the hope that the group will continue to have a positive impact on pupil’s engagement in meal times at home and References Farrow C and Coulthard H (2012). Relationships between sensory sensitivity, anxiety and selective eating in children. Appetite, 58(3): 842-846 Health and Care Professions Council (2016) Standards of conduct, performance and ethics. Available at: www.hcpc-uk.org/assets/docume Benefits for occupational therapists Providing this service for us as occupational therapists, has further developed our awareness of the importance of food and meal times as an occupation. Through this group we have conducted activity analysis and reviewed the individual components of this activity, for example, laying the table, practising cutlery skills when preparing food, organisational tasks and pouring water. We have also developed our own leadership skills through organising and planning the group, for example conducting risk assessments, communicating with parents and teachers, time management and advocating for this as a priority area within therapy to continue to promote health and wellbeing. Positive feedback from participants and their families nts/10004EDFStandardsofconduct,performanceandethics.pdf [accessed: 27 June 2018] Herndon A, DiGuiseppi C, Johnson S, Leiferman J and Reynolds A (2009) Does nutritional intake differ between children with Autism Spectrum Disorders and children with typical development? Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 39(2): 212-222 Marshall J, Hill R, Ziviani J and Dodrill P (2014). Features of feeding difficulty in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 16(2): 151-158 Ofsted (2018) More House School; Residential provision inspected under the social care common inspection framework. Available at: https://files. api.beta.ofsted.gov.uk/SC013927__13.PDF [accessed: 27 June 2018] Laura Hawkins and Sarah Motto, occupational therapists, More House School, Farnham, email: [email protected] or [email protected] Overall, the group allowed the boys to explore and taste new foods, and as a result of this they all appeared to be much more confident in the presence of foods that were unfamiliar to them. One of the children in the group said: ‘The group helped me to try trying foods’. We sent out a questionnaire out before and after the group, to measure the changes in attitudes and the effectiveness of the group, © GettyImages/zeljkosantrac and some of the feedback ‘‘ ...the group has had a positive impact on allowing and supporting the children to try and engage in lunchtime as an occupation... OTnews January 2019 27