Strike action is taking place in September and October. We'll contact you directly if you or your child's appointment is affected.

Your child's appointment with the community occupational therapy service

If your child is accepted into our service, we will arrange an initial appointment to talk with you about your child’s needs. We will explain the service we offer and set participation-based goals that are meaningful to you and your child.

Appointments typically last 30 minutes to one hour, depending on the content of the session.

Following your first appointment, we may offer you:

  • further assessment of your child’s needs
  • strategies to use at home
  • advice and support to your child’s teachers
  • coaching sessions for you as a parent/carer. These may be in a group or individually and may be provided virtually or in-person
  • sessions for your child either at home, school or our clinic, dependent on the nature of the goal
  • recommendations for specialist equipment or seating in your child’s nursery or school

How long will the intervention last?

We will work with you in a timely way over a number of sessions to address your priorities and to equip you or your child with the skills needed to improve these. At the end of this time, you will be discharged from our service.

Changing or cancelling your appointment

If you are unable to attend your appointment for any reason, please contact us using the relevant numbers at the top of this page as soon as possible. We can try to arrange a more suitable appointment time for you.

Please note you can only reschedule your appointment twice.

Our discharge policy

If you do not attend and do not let us know in advance, we will assume you no longer require our service and you will be discharged.

Accessing the service in different languages

An interpreting service is available for all appointments. Please let us know if you require an interpreter and what language would be best.

If you need to speak to your therapist before coming to your appointment, language line can be used to ensure that language is not a barrier to communication. You can access the language support service on 020 7188 8815 or email languagesupport@gstt.nhs.uk.

Please note that due to COVID-19, there is now decreased availability of in-person interpretation. We will work our best to accommodate your language needs.

Your experience with us

We aim to provide an unbiased service to meet your needs, values and priorities, so that your experience is a positive one. We are keen to improve our services and value your hearing your stories about your experience with us. We will sometimes carry out surveys to find out what you think about our services so that we can continue to improve our care to you.

Contacts

Tel: 020 3049 8181