Crisis averted
Posted: November 4, 2013
ATSU’s relationship with Mesa’s East Valley Child Crisis Center not only helps children in need, but also gives occupational therapy students an opportunity to gain clinical experience. According to OT Professor Rachel Diamant, PhD, OTR/L, CBP, it’s a win-win situation. Read Still Magazine’s interview with Dr. Diamant to learn more about the Child Crisis Center and how students interact with kids at the center.
Q&A with Dr. Diamant, OT professor
What is the East Valley Child Crisis Center
The East Valley Child Crisis Center provides a safe, home-like environment for children birth through 11 years who are experiencing abuse, neglect, or abandonment and who are living in unsafe situations. The center provides a place for these children to stay until they can return home, go into foster care, or into an adoptive situation.
How did you become involved with the East Valley Child Crisis Center
Many years before I became faculty with the ATSU OT program, I agreed to provide pro-bono OT consultation to address the sensory-behavioral needs and feeding issues of children at the East Valley Child Crisis Center. I provided several sessions of staff training and consultation for specific children in the management of sensory-based behaviors and sensory-based feeding behaviors and issues for about two years. Once I met the staff and the children, I came to appreciate the dedication of this organization to support the needs of a very challenging group of children and families. I really love working with children and learned that this group of children was especially vulnerable to being lost in the system. I recognized an opportunity for further OT involvement and an opportunity for OT students to learn more about child development and the issues of children who have experienced abuse and neglect. I met with staff, completed a needs assessment, and we problem-solved together to figure out ways to provide developmental opportunities for the children at the center and educational opportunities for OT students.
How long has this partnership existed?
I initiated a sensory-motor developmental play activity assignment where OT students create, and run sensory-motor developmental play groups for the younger children at the center as part of one of the OT pediatric courses. We have provided these sessions every January-February since 2007. As a request from staff for assistance in the development of life care skills for the older children at the center, we developed and started running a life skills camp. The first camp ran in July 2009, and we have continued running a camp during July of 2011, 2012, and 2013. In addition to the camp, in 2010, I developed an opportunity for OT students to learn how to do a play-based developmental assessment as part of another OT pediatrics course during September-October. Therefore, the children of the East Valley Child Crisis Center have more opportunities for the development of age-appropriate life care skills, and OT students have opportunities to directly apply classroom skills in a community setting. A win-win situation.
What did this year’s life skills camp entail?
The Life Skills Summer camp is a five consecutive day camp targeted for children in the “Big Kids” unit. The children experienced activities related to age-appropriate mealtime management that included making healthy food choices, age-appropriate meal planning and food preparation, mealtime set-up and clean-up, and appropriate mealtime socialization.
In addition, the children experienced activities related to self-care management that included self-hygiene skills (hair care, tooth care, washing), and learning age-appropriate leisure activity management (activity selection, social skills during play).
ATSU OT faculty organized and supervised the activities with assistance from OT students and Crisis Center staff. Field trips to community locations (restaurant, bowling, public pool) are included as part of the camp experience and as practice for social skills.
What were the biggest challenges at camp? Any successes?
Behavioral management can be a challenge, but the children are usually so interested in the activities and enjoy the camp structure that extreme behavioral issues are minimal. In fact, one of the successes is that children learn to control their behaviors (behavioral self-regulation) because they want to be part of the activities.
This year, a big success was the ability of one extremely emotionally volatile child to be able to engage in the camp. This child had only one emotional outburst all week, when usually this child would have outbursts several times in a day. Another child, who demonstrated decreased ability in social interaction was able to socially engage with the other children and OT students during activities and was less withdrawn.
In a previous year, one 5-year-old child who was non-verbal was taught some basic sign language during the camp and developed the beginnings of communication skills. When he entered school in the fall, he had the beginnings of verbal skills that progressed into language development during the school year.
For OT students, the success has been the opportunity to work with at-risk children, and learn to understand the needs of this population.
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