The Speech and Language Therapy team at Rowan Wood promote effective and functional communication for children through:

• Universal Support
  • Offering training and advice n specific approaches
  • Supporting all staff to make Rowan Wood a communication friendly environment
  • Maximising the communicative potential and opportunity for all students.
• Targeted Support
  • Support with curriculum planning and differentiation
  • Support with communication targets setting for individual children
  • Support with group planning and communication groups
  • Providing advice, strategies and support to families.
• Specialised and Specific Support
  • Offering some direct therapy sessions to help children learn and use specific skills
  • Offering multi-disciplinary assessment and strategies or advice for specific children

The Speech and Language Therapy team are on site to manage a caseload of children with complex feeding difficulties across Compass Special Schools.

Speech and Language Therapy team, support the school development plan and priority areas of focus, provide governor training, and attend the therapy steering group and the school AAC clinic.

You can contact the Speech and Language Therapy Team via your child’s home-school contact book or on 020 8317 8596 to discuss your child’s communication skills or complex feeding difficulties.

Occupational Therapy

Children's Occupational Therapists (OTs) work with children, their family, school and wider team, to enable the child to achieve their full potential, and become more independent in the activities they need to do at school and at home.

Helping children who experience difficulties with such tasks as:

• Being able to sit independently on a chair or toilet.
• Personal care and dressing.
• Fine motor skills and tool use (including using pencils, scissors, cutlery).
• Accessing switches.
• Sensory processing, for example children who find it difficult to calm or settle themselves.

OTs work to provide ideas, strategies and equipment to promote children’s functional skills, these might include:

• Specialist supportive seating, supportive toilet chairs, switches, or small items of equipment (e.g. cutlery) to help develop independence in everyday tasks.
• Advice and strategies on incorporating sensory strategies within the classroom.

Children's Occupational Therapists (OTs) work with children, their family, school and wider team, to enable the child to achieve their full potential and become more independent in the everyday activities they need to do at school and at home, such as self-care and leisure and play activities.

OTs consider upper limb function in activities which may involve dressing, feeding, cutlery and tool use, and provide advice and strategies on incorporating sensory strategies within the classroom for children with sensory processing difficulties, who may, for example, find it difficult to calm or settle themselves

Children are seen for an episode of specialised input to address the functional concern. OTs work closely with school staff and families, providing advice and strategies.

How OTs work

The team works in partnership with the leadership team of the school, involving themselves in service development, training and enhancing the environment. Additionally, they support class teams to meet the needs of their children throughout their school day. They provide direct, specialised therapeutic intervention to address an identified functional concern, which they would then be supported with, within their everyday environment.

The team supports the school Sensory Processing team, including the provision of sensory diets, specialist resourcing, focus groups and sensory circuits.

How to get in touch

If you want to talk about OT therapy provision, please call 0208 854 0594

All Music Therapy is commissioned by the school and the team can contribute to the school in other ways, such as supporting the school priorities. The team works in partnership with the leadership team of the school and are involved in service development and training. Additionally, Music Therapy support class teams in identifying transferable skills from the direct music therapy sessions.
As Music Therapists, we use music which is specially tailored in order to meet the child’s specific strengths and difficulties. We then aim to contribute to children’s overall development as well as working on their specific emotional, social or behavioural difficulties through live music-making.

Group Music Therapy

Once the children are engaged in music-making, the therapist can then enable them to achieve many of the following aims:

• Independence
• Concentration
• Spontaneous interaction
• Spontaneous waiting and listening to each other
• Enjoying learning new skills together
• Using fine and gross motor skills
• Oral skills such as blowing
• Developing confidence in the use of their voices through singing together and to each other
•  

Individual Music Therapy

Children are recommended for individual Music Therapy by the class team, therapists or parents, in order to give them focussed and dedicated time.  Some reasons for individual work are:

• Social: to help develop relationships and communication
• Emotional: to help develop self-expression, confidence, enjoyment, sense of achievement
• Behavioural: to help regulate outbursts of energy and awareness of effect on others
• Physical: to encourage movement

How to get in touch

If you want to talk about therapy provision, please call 0208 317 8596.