Therapy plays a very important role in helping support our pupils.

At Riverside, through the NHSCT, we continue to provide services from:

• Physiotherapy
• Occupational therapy
• Speech and language therapy

In-school therapy provisions include:

• Creative Arts for well being
• Play therapy 
• Rebound Therapy

Play Therapy 

Play therapy is a therapeutic approach that uses play as a medium for children to express their thoughts, feelings and experiences in a safe environment.  It is facilitated by our trained therapist Breda to help our pupils to process complex emotions, develop coping strategies, and improve communication skills.  Through structured and unstructured play activities, pupils can work through issues such as trauma, anxiety, behavioural challenges, and social difficulties.  Play therapy is particularly effective for pupils who may struggle to articulate their feelings verbally, allowing them to express themselves naturally through play. 

Creative arts programme for wellbeing

Our creative arts programme for wellbeing has been developed using therapy techniques. In the past, we have focused on art based activities either directed tasks where there will be a guide for the session or non-directed where they will lead the session. This programme was developed to develop pupil’s confidence, engagement and communication. It is great to build positive relationships and develop their attention skills as well as help support behaviour management. Each child is given individual targets for the sessions based on their individual needs. An example of a target for one of the pupils was to begin to express and communicate his likes and dislikes using art based activities. 

Examples of activities: 

• Collage of things they love
• Sensory art such as painting with hands and feet
• A family portrait and using clay to create their own models

Comment from a parent: My son has benefited from the sessions and i can see it is developing his confidence. My son loved putting all his artwork he created on his wall at home which he then reads daily and it makes him smile. 

Teacher's Observation of a pupil: This pupil has made great progress over the session with his attention and engagement. The duration he has stayed in sessions has progressed and he is now more engaged in taking part in the activities. He has also made progress in expressing his own needs where he verbalised ‘done’ when he had finished an activity. 

Music Therapy

Music Therapy is a clinical evidence-based intervention using music, sounds and voice in interactive, imaginative and stimulative ways to create change and improvements in communication, social, cognitive and physical needs and to enhance a person's emotional and mental well-being. The intervention involves four steps: assessment, therapeutic goal setting, treatment and evaluation. Each music therapy intervention is tailored to meet a pupil's individual needs.

Rebound Therapy  

Riverside School is delighted to have two staff members trained in Rebound Therapy. Coupled with our own large trampoline, this allows us to run our own in-school Rebound Therapy programmes. Rebound Therapy is a form of physical therapy. It uses trampolines to provide therapeutic exercises to people with a wide variety of disabilities and additional needs. The therapy involves using the moving bed of the trampoline to promote movement in the participant.

Sensory Integration

Sensory Integration is a big part of our pupils' daily activities. Cash for Kids has allowed us to purchase more sensory resources to create circuits for whole-school use and individual circuits for the classrooms. We continue to train our staff in sensory integration strategies and approaches. We use  Alerting, Organizing, Calming activities to create a sensory circuit. We also do this in conjunction the guidance of Occupational Therapy.

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