Courses for Parents/Carers

Sleep

Sleep is an occupation that is vital to our existence!

Getting enough sleep is essential to enable us to be healthy, promoting our growth and development, and supporting us to participate effectively in essential and desired everyday activities.

Children and young people often experience difficulties with sleep, including settling to sleep, night waking, and early morning waking. Consequently, this can impact negatively on their daytime productivity and well-being, and indeed that of their parents or carers who are often up through the night supporting and encouraging their children to sleep, missing out on vital sleep themselves.

Rhona trained as a sleep counsellor with Sleep Scotland in 2010 and since this time has successfully embedded this into her practice as an Occupational Therapist with children, young people, and adults, and has lectured extensively in this field.

To promote good sleep, Rhona delivers an occupational therapy-based training course with resources for families called “Sleep Insight”.

Sleep Insight covers the following content:

• • Exploring what sleep is and why it is important to our everyday participation and performance.
  • Sleep based problems in children and young people
  • Sleep Needs
  • Creating the right sleep space to promote improved sleep
  • Evidenced based sleep promotion strategies
  • Where to get further advice and support

This course can be delivered in a flexible way to meet your needs, please contact Rhona to discuss further.

Sensory

We all have sensory needs, preferences, and challenges, understanding ourselves as a sensory being can help us to function at our best in the different environments that we use and make life more meaningful. Sometimes our sensory based challenges can impact on our ability to engage in everyday tasks effectively, therefore learning more about this topic and finding the right strategies to address these challenges can promote better engagement and performance in everyday activities.

Rhona has postgraduate training in Ayres Sensory Integration®. This is a theory and an approach used by therapists with additional training that was originally created by Dr. Jean Ayres, an occupational therapist, and a psychologist. She developed this approach to better explain the relationship between our behaviour and our bodies’ nervous system.

​To help improve awareness of our senses and how our senses support us to function in everything that we do, Rhona provides a training course with resources on sensory processing and integration called “My Sensory Self”.

My Sensory Self contains the following content:

• • Help to understand the different sensory systems that we have and how they help us with everything we do in everyday life.
  • Support to recognise and understand some of the sensory challenges individuals may present with.
  • Explore strategies that may be useful to embed at home, at school, and in the community. Please note that the strategies provided will be generalised and are not to replace an individualised, comprehensive assessment conducted by an Occupational Therapist with additional postgraduate training in this approach.

This course can be delivered in a flexible way to meet your needs, please contact Rhona to discuss further.