The University of Canberra (UC) has partnered with Canberra’s Mother Teresa School in a program that sees Occupational Therapy students from the Faculty of Health supporting primary school children on a weekly basis.
Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Vice-President, Academic of UC, Geoff Crisp said Occupational Therapy students assessed and supported children in building day-to-day skills and it was hoped the program could be extended to additional schools across Canberra.
“Not only will we see a benefit to the students and their learning outcomes, but it sees our Occupational Therapy students getting hands-on experience within our community,” Professor Crisp said.
“The Occupational Therapy students started working in the classroom from March this year, assessing around 100 kindergarten children and their needs,” he said.
“They have also been working with some Year 1 students who require extra support.”
Professor Crisp said the practical component of the UC Students’ work commenced in Term 2 and saw the children divided into working groups to practice their fine motor, play and emotional regulation skills.
He said the idea was first put forward by kindergarten teacher at Mother Teresa School, Karen Garrity, who worked with the Clinical Educator of Occupational Therapy at UC’s Faculty of Health, Jacqui Etherington to implement it.
“With long waitlists for Occupational Therapists, the idea came about from thinking that if we can give children access to short, focused interventions with specialists in the classroom, it could be really successful,” Ms Garrity said.
“We want these children to have a sense of accomplishment and to feel proud of what they are doing,” she said.
Ms Garrity said that if children couldn’t form letters and use their hands smoothly across the page, or didn’t have the core strength to sit up and write, they could fatigue easily and lose interest.
“And the gap in their learning can widen,” she said.
