What is an Occupational Therapy Evaluation?
A thorough occupational therapy evaluation is critical to assessing your child’s need to determine the need for occupational therapy services as well as identifying specific goals to be addressed throughout therapy once established with an occupational therapist.
We believe in delivering quality occupational therapy services to make you and your child feel comfortable at PDC. Our primary goal here is to ensure your child gets exactly what they need to be successful in their daily activities and life. We want to make sure the evaluation process is thorough, but also comfortable for all of those involved, including you and your child! We encourage parents to ask questions throughout the process to make sure you feel heard, understood, and knowledgeable about the process.
An occupational therapy evaluation will give the therapist the opportunity to look at the different areas where your child may be having difficulty completing their daily activities (i.e. “occupations”). For example: managing emotions, participation in school or play activities, dressing, grooming, bath time, feeding or eating, social skills, and even sleep. The occupational therapist will evaluate different skill areas depending on information provided in the referral and in the parent questionnaire.
The in-person portion of our evaluations typically last approximately 90-120 minutes which allows the therapist to gather a “snapshot” of your child’s skills and potential areas for growth. It is also the time for you, as a parent or guardian, to share any concerns and areas where you have observed the greatest need in your child’s day to day life.
Breakdown of the Evaluation Process:
Prior to the in-person portion of the evaluation, the caregiver will be invited to our patient portal. There you will find information about our clinic policies, HIPAA information, consent forms, as well as parent questionnaires which need to be completed prior to scheduling the evaluation. In most cases, an electronic version of the Sensory Profile-2 will also need to be completed prior to scheduling the evaluation. Other electronic versions of assessments may be sent to be completed based on your child’s concerns. Based upon the needs of the child there may be additional forms that are required to be completed. All of this information is essential for the evaluating therapist to have the most comprehensive and accurate understanding of your child and your concerns before meeting them. This helps ensure therapists are choosing the best assessment tools for an evaluation.
The in-person portion of the evaluation is broken down into 3 parts:
- Standardized testing
- Clinical observations
- Parent interview
Standardized assessments are a crucial part of an evaluation because the assessment will provide information about how your child performs certain tasks compared to a group of same-aged, typically-developing peers. It is typical for a therapist to select 1-2 assessments based on your child’s unique needs. Standardized assessments help show different payer sources (such as insurance companies) that there is a need for skilled therapy services.
Clinical observations provide additional information about your child’s abilities such as how your child holds a pencil, how their eyes move together, how they coordinate larger body movements like jumping jacks, cross crawls or standing on one foot, how they follow directions, and even how they sit in a chair at the table. Based on the age of your child and the areas being assessed, the therapist will lead your child through a number of tasks to gain more information. The clinical observations portion of the assessment is designed to supplement the information gathered from standardized testing. This ensures we are getting a really global picture of everything that may be going on with your child.
Parent interview is an opportunity for the parents or guardians and the evaluating therapist to talk to gain additional subjective information about your child. This is another important piece of the evaluation as the parent or guardians have the opportunity to share how their child’s day goes and any additional information that the parent or guardians feel is important for the therapist to know. Some parents prefer to talk without their child present in the room, and if that is the case, please notify your therapist as they may offer to set up a phone or Zoom interview with you later in the day to accommodate this request. Most often, the parent interview is completed while the child is given opportunities to play with toys or games. Some children even enjoy answering some questions about themselves during this time, and offering their own insight into their challenges!
The evaluation process also consists of other components that are not in-person but are essential in providing a thorough written report. These typically include:
- Review of information provided in questionnaires
- Scoring of standardized tests
- Interpreting the results of the standardized tests, questionnaires, clinical observations, and parent interview
- Writing the evaluation
- Providing suggestions and recommendations
After the Evaluation Has Been Completed:
After the evaluation, the therapist will write a complete and thorough report of the evaluation, typically within a month. The evaluation will also come with a plan of care that includes goals that your child would be working on in therapy. PDC will share the results with you over the client portal and discuss any questions you may have. We always encourage parents to ask questions or voice concerns about the goals made in the initial plan of care. While these goals may be modified once the child begins therapy, we want to make sure parents understand the goals being made. We also want to make sure the goal areas being addressed reflect areas of concern that are most important to the family.
