What is this Program
Our Feeding and Mealtime Management program provides specialised occupational therapy intervention using the SOS Approach protocols. We are here to support you and your child with our comprehensive feeding program, designed to help them thrive and develop a positive relationship with food.
Purpose of the Program
Grace Children’s Therapy focuses on increasing your child’s comfort level by allowing them time to explore food and discover the many different properties of food. It also encourages children to interact with food in a playful and non-stressful way. Making mealtime a happy experience.
Who this Program is for
The program assists children that are either selective eaters, or show sensory aversions to food. We use the SOS approach to feeding as the foundation for our individualised Occupational Therapy intervention for attaining feeding functional goals.
SOS Approach to Feeding Problems
The program runs weekly for 10 weeks. Each week consists of gross motor exercises followed by a structured therapy meal. The therapy meal includes a range of foods from a variety of food groups and texture groups. The foods are presented one-by-one, which is different to how meals at home may work.
Therapy meals focus on a child’s skill-set and how they can respond to a range of foods. Sometimes the food is presented a few times through the course of the program to evaluate progress of the underlying skills required for eating.
Mealtime skills we work on in the therapy meal include (but are not limited to):
Being comfortable with new foods in the room (tolerance).
Being able to sit at a table for therapy meal duration.
Improving emotional regulation at mealtimes.
Social participation with peers in a meal setting.
Sensory resilience to bigger smells, tactile inputs (like powdery and wet foods), different levels of noise that food makes, different visual cues from foods and different tastes.
Improved courses of action to cope with foods they don’t currently want to eat.
Motor planning tasks of cutting, spoon feeding, using forks and open cup drinking.
Improved chewing and oral motor skill.
How to present a family meal at home that will generalise the newly learnt skills to the home dinner table.
What to Expect
A Nurturing Approach to expand your child's repertoire of foods.
Emotional Support to help understand triggers & discomfort associated with feeding.
Skill Development to enhance oral, sensory, motor, cognitive, & emotional abilities.
Education & Strategies to overcome daily feeding struggles.
Structured Feeding Program to develop new skills & behaviour around food.
Caregiver Support including resources for home & community environments.
Program Dates - TBA
Time: Thursdays 10:30am, 11:40am or 3:30pm
Fridays - 2.20pm, 10.30am, 3.30pm or 4.40pm
Dates: TBA
Sessions: TBA
Fees: Speak to one of our team members
Venue: Grace Children's Therapy
Unit 35, 7 Anella Ave, Castle Hill NSW 2154
Ph: 1300 760 779
