Group Therapy – Josey Sharpe Occupational Therapy

Social Skills Groups

We help children to learn the skills to make and maintain friends.

Social Skills Groups

For many individuals, the process of communicating and interacting with other individuals is anything but natural. While these challenges are commonly experienced by individuals with various diagnoses, there are also children and adults who experience social learning difficulties who have not received a diagnosis.

During social skills groups, therapists offer a range of strategies that address individual strengths and weaknesses in processing social information.

We base our social skills groups on the Social Thinking Curriculum by Michelle Garcia Winner. We have had fantastic feedback both from carers of children and educators after they have attended our social thinking groups.

We help children to learn the skills to make and maintain friends. These skills include:

greetings
listening with the whole body
thoughts and feelings and recognising and responding to feelings
joining in – being part of the group
following rules of games – what is the group plan?
starting and continuing conversations
deciding how big a problem is and matching the size of their reaction to the size of the problem
persevering with games and friends
dealing with conflict
cooperating

Kids participating in this group get to learn all out Superflex. Superflex is the super hero of social town. Since we learn about super heroes at this group don’t be alarmed if you arrive at the group to find your OTs and Speech Therapists in super hero gear.

Transition to School Program

We teach children what is expected of them before commencing school.

Transition to School Program

The Transition to School program teaches children what is expected of them before commencing school. The program involves a range of activities that will be rotated across the days and sessions.

This program is always held in January the week before school commences, preparing children for kindergarten. The group follows a typical school day, starting with group time, having breaks for recess and lunch, structured activities and free play. Children have a chance to get used to the long school hours, being in a school environment, practising using the bubblers and school rest room, and having access to school playground equipment.

Fine motor group

Activities include:

conversation skills
listening skills
letter-sound knowledge
developing functional fine-motor abilities
pencil skills
scissor skills
recognising, matching and naming shapes, sizes and colours
visual perception skills
gross-motor skills

Core Strength and Coordination

We improve your child’s core strength, coordination and endurance.

Core Strength and Coordination

Since the first time we ran this group it has been popular with kids returning to continue to improve their skills in balance, strength, bilateral coordination and various skills. During this group we aim to:

Improve your child’s core strength and endurance
Improve your child’s bilateral coordination skills – focusing on using both sides of the body together in a coordinated manner.
Improve your child’s cardio endurance – to improve endurance and up those energy levels.
Expose your child to a variety of respiration activities

During this group we will always have a team work activity to get our little friends working together. This is a high energy, fun and exciting group that leaves our little friends (and us!) a bit exhausted by the end of the session.

Sensory Based Social Play Group

We provide sensory rich play based tasks and games working on skills for playing with others.

Sensory Based Social Play Group

This is a new group we have added to our repertoire of what we offer. As the name states it is heavily embedded in sensory integration theory but also focuses on developing your child’s social emotional growth and development. This group steers its focus away from the theory heavy social thinking group and is rooted in activities – especially those sensory rich play based tasks and games.

Sensory Play Group

The aims of this group include:

Incorporating your child’s interest into being able to participate in activities and games with peers.
Scaffolding your child’s ideas and working on their motivation to play with others.
Looking at sensory regulation and arousal levels to support higher order interactions.
Improve turn taking skills.
Improve collaborative play skills.

Problem Solving Group

Practise social thinking theory in natural play spaces supported by OTs.

Problem Solving Group

This is a new and successful group we offer. Moving away from the theory heavy group but offering a safe environment that is supported by OTs to practise the social thinking theory in more natural play spaces.

The aims of this group include:

To increase your child’s independence with identifying problems
To facilitate problem solving by enabling your child to find their own solutions to problems
To increase co-operative problem solving by requiring your child to work together with others to solve problems
To enhance self reflection skills by requiring your child to reflect on what they may do differently next time to solve a similar problem.

Each group is tailored to the needs of the children attending. Group length and number of attendees varies and is individualised to treatment goals of each participant. As such fees are calculated once group goals, number accepted in each group and group length is decided. To give an estimate of costs – a four day social thinking group (12 contact hours) is $500, a four day core strength and coordination group (8 contact hours) is $400. Group dates, goals and costs are put up on our Facebook page and in our offices each term. For more information, please contact us.