At Occumax we help your child to develop strong social connections with others around them. Our Social Worker will work with you and your family to help create a more harmonious family life, build your child's self confidence, emotional literacy and resilience.

An initial assessment usually takes about 1.5 hours. Both you and your child need to be present.

During this appointment, your Social Worker will discuss your main concerns and observe your child playing and interacting with others. Your Social Worker will ask you questions to get a sense of what life is really like at home for you, your child and other family members. If your child is experiencing challenges at school or in the community, they will also ask for background information about those environments too.

Your Social Worker will be on the look out for a range of foundation skills that are important for your child's social and emotional development, such your child's:

After your Social Worker has analysed all the information gathered during the initial consultation, they will discuss the findings with you (usually in your second session). They will also discuss what intervention approach will best suit your child, set intervention goals and you can decide how often you would like therapy.

Parents are required to attend therapy appointments, unless otherwise agreed. This gives you the opportunity to see how to do the activities at home and the cues and prompts your child responds to. It also allows you to discuss any issues or questions you might have about your child’s development.

Sometimes older primary aged children and teenagers find it easier to talk about their thoughts and feelings without their parent present. If you or Social Worker feels that your child would work better if they attended the therapy session by themself, then this can be accommodated for. In these instances, parents are usually asked to come into the last 5-10 minutes of the session so that they can be briefed on strategies learnt during the session, discuss any issues that may have come up and given activities to try at home. This is also a time when parents can ask for issues that they might need guidance with.