Katy qualified as an Occupational Therapist in 2010, with a BSc (Hons) Occupational Therapy from York St John University. Ever since her first experience of working with children, back in 2008, Katy has always known this was her passion and she’s interested in providing a Multi-Disciplinary Service, as well as working individually with children and families.
She’s worked in a number of services in Leeds since qualifying as an Occupational Therapist, initially in adult mental health, and adult acute medicine; however, as soon as a paediatric post arose, she keenly applied for it. She has been working in paediatrics for over three years now in acute and community settings in Leeds, and works as a Senior Occupational Therapist.
Katy has worked with children from 0-19, with a variety of conditions, such as cerebral palsy, autism, Asperger’s, Developmental Coordination Disorder, genetic syndromes and Down’s Syndrome. Katy has a keen interest in goal setting with families, and working with them in a family-centred way to achieve these goals.
She’s keen to practice in line with current evidence and best practice, and has presented at a number of conferences around the use of new and exciting ways of working with children and families. Katy works using a ‘top down’ framework for her practice; this allows her to focus on adapting the environment and occupation to the child, as opposed to trying to ‘fix’ the child.
Katy is keen to understand about the child and the family’s everyday life, and how activities fit into this. She is extremely interested in helping children and families to enhance their participation in everyday life, and as a result her work focuses on the activity that is the child’s goal as opposed to devising a traditional ‘fine motor programme’, for example.
Katy has an accreditation in the CO-OP (cognitive orientation to occupational performance) approach, an intervention that is particularly useful for children with DCD to empower them and support them with problem solving their own goals.
She’s gained significant experience working across mainstream and special schools, providing advice and information for teachers around handwriting, inclusion in the curriculum, use of ICT in school, and moving and handling advice.
Katy has a comprehensive knowledge of specialist equipment available for children with complex physical needs, and has developed good working relationships with companies across Yorkshire to arrange demonstrations and assessments in people’s homes and schools.
Katy is an extremely enthusiastic, reliable and friendly occupational therapist who is always striving to do the very best for the children and families she works with.
