Cambridgeshire Children's Occupational Therapy Service

Occupational therapy can help children, learn, socialise have fun and be more independent. We want to improve opportunities for children to help them develop and thrive.

To help your child participate we may support them by adapting their environment at home or at school. We can teach new skills and techniques or recommend different ways of completing tasks. We'll also assess and provide suitable equipment. 

We can give advice to parents and teaching staff on strategies and approaches that may help if your child needs support in areas of daily life such as:

• eating a meal
• getting ready to go out
• using the toilet
• playing with friends
• playing sports or doing hobbies

In our team we use a wide variety of intervention approaches. From extensive research we have found basing your child's intervention around an activity in a familiar environment really supports their learning.

This confirmed our belief that the best way to support children is to work together with their families.

Approaches to support you:

• Health coaching.
• Providing educational talks and workshops.
• Self led online learning videos on our website.
• Offering telephone advice.
• Modelling different techniques.
• Helping you build your confidence around what you can do. We see these approaches as a partnership. 

The Children’s Occupational Therapy (OT) service helps children and young people (CYP) participate in normal everyday activities such as play, participation in school/nursery as well as managing personal care (dressing, bathing, getting on and off the toilet and getting in and out of the bath).

We also support CYP by giving advice on adapting environments both at home and at school in order to make these safe and accessible. We want to help children and young people lead full and happy lives, to realise their potential and to take part as valued members of their community. We want to support a family to help their child.

For full details visit our core offer page

• Administrators have specialist knowledge of the service and are usually the first people you have contact with when you call with queries. They support the clinical teams in a variety of ways, including arranging appointments and sending out Reports.
• Children’s Occupational Therapists help children to participate, learn and develop independence in activities of daily living (such as eating, personal care and play).  As an integrated service we work across health, social care and education, which means we see children in a variety of settings including clinic, home and educational placements. Our intervention is unique to each individual child’s needs and can include teaching new skills and techniques, recommending different ways of completing tasks, adapting the environment or assessing for suitable equipment to support function. 
• Therapy Assistants in our team support the work of the children’s occupational therapists in lots of different ways by; assisting in assessments/treatments, ordering, checking and adjusting equipment such as specialist seating and slings and carrying out blocks of therapy.

The occupational therapy department has two core teams, North and South, and a housing team that works across both areas.

The North team are based and offer clinic appointments at the Oak Tree Centre in Huntingdon and the Children's Department, North Cambridgeshire Hospital in Wisbech.

The South Team are based at The Peacock Centre in Cambridge, and Princess of Wales Hospital in Ely.