Assessment

This assessment will include observing your child through play and a variety of activities and using specific assessment techniques to look at their movements, motor skills, balance, coordination, gait (walking pattern), muscle strength, selective motor control, joint motion, bony alignment/torsion and tone. Following your child’s assessment, we may recommend a block of one to one physiotherapy sessions and discuss with you and your child specific functional goals. We may also advise completion of one or several outcome measures to help monitor progress which will help measure the effectiveness of physiotherapy.

With your consent we will gather information about the current team helping your child such as other NHS therapists and doctors. We may need to discuss our clinical findings, goals and treatment plan with members of this team to ensure good communication, teamwork and gold standard care. We may also suggest onward referrals if we feel your child would benefit from further assessment with a specialist.

Depending on your child’s needs following the initial assessment we may suggest completion of a validated outcome measure to further assess your child, such as the Gross Motor Functional Measure. These types of standardised assessments can be used to help set goals, measure progress and help with treatment planning as well as identify any areas of delay.

This assessment will help you and your child identify an array of local sports that your child may like to try. We will contact the organisers to discuss your child’s needs. We are also happy to attend the initial session to ensure your child participates at the correct level to maintain safety. We are also keen to help challenge your child, so they are implementing some of their physiotherapy programme into the activity as well as helping to develop strength and gross motor skills. Your child will need a  physiotherapy assessment first so we can learn about them and what sports they would like to try.

We use Dartfish to video your child’s walking from the front and the side, both barefoot and with any current orthotics. We like using video analysis as we can slow the video down to help us understand what part of walking your child is finding difficult. Alongside a thorough assessment of your child we can use this analysis to help with recommendations for orthotic prescriptions and bespoke strengthening and stretching (prolonged) to improve your child’s gait (walking pattern).

We often work closely with and may refer to (with your consent) paediatricians, orthopaedic surgeons, consultant neurologists, physiotherapists (NHS), orthotists, Occupational Therapists, Speech and Language Therapists, Clinical and Educational Psychologists and Special Educational Needs Coordinators.