Three-year-old Conn Brennan attends Occupational Therapy at Sensational Kids in Kildare.  Dana Katz Murphy who is the national Clinical Services Manager for Sensational Kids explains Conn’s therapy goals. “Conn comes to OT at Sensational Kids for a number of reasons. In OT we set two types of goals for Conn, his distal goals, which are the goals that his family sets like dressing and feeding himself independently, being able to put on his shoes, brush his teeth and more.  And then what we have are proximal goals and those are the goals we work on every day in therapy. These include things like Conn’s balance reactions, his postural stability, using the two sides of his body together in function and stimulating all of his sensory systems, his movement systems, his muscles and joints, his tactile system, working on hand-eye coordination, and working on functional motor planning and task organisation skills. Conn has already made huge improvements in these areas since starting OT.”

Dana goes on to explain why this integrated approach is beneficial for Conn, “working on all of those systems together promotes Conn’s sensory integration which promotes functional skill development at the end of the day.” The overall goal, Dana explains is to “maximise Conn’s functional independence in all of his activities of daily living.”

 

Conn’s story is part of a project entitled #SensationalFamiles.  The project was approved by Government with support from the Dormant Accounts Fund, with the aim of shining a light on the impact of social enterprises like Sensational Kids.  A social enterprise is a business that works primarily to improve the lives of people. The business of social enterprise is social good. Sensational Kids exists only to provide subsidised therapy supports to children of all abilities including those with additional needs.