Monday, 1 September 2025

When did school based "therapy" become

a "thing"? 

I can understand the need in some situations but it appears to be more than some schools can handle. They are not specialist schools with a team of on-site trained staff.

I had a long and generally very happy association with several schools for children with both physical and intellectual disabilities. Two of those schools had a wide range of physiotherapy, occupational therapy and speech therapy available at school during the school day. The staff worked with children individually and they came into the classrooms to help with issues we had. I worked with them to set up the physical means by which some children were able to communicate without speech. Through it all I knew that this was all highly specialised and individualised therapy designed to allow a child to function at their maximum capacity. It was hard work but it was rewarding.

Doing away with specialist schools meant those services were no longer available on site as they had been. Providing those services is much harder, much more expensive and by no means always as successful. How can it be when teachers without specialist training are expected to observe and describe issues and work with the therapist and parents as well as child to bring about a possible solution to a problem? There can be no quick discussion with the occupational therapist during a lunch break or a call to the physiotherapist because a seating issue has occurred. It is much more likely you will need to wait for several days and then only meet if the time is made.

If  you talk to anyone it is much more likely you will find yourself talking with the support worker provided for a child who is finding it difficult to emotionally or psychologically cope with school. Even that may not occur. Those workers are only there with the permission of the school anyway. They are not there as of right and they can be asked to leave at any time.

I suspect most schools are willing to have such workers there. It will often be a matter of "if anyone can help..." but they can only be there under certain conditions and they must be "within line of sight" - or able to be seen at all times. Yes, some come into the classrooms but others need to work elsewhere. You cannot have a child trying to concentrate on standing upright and being watched by other children who should be concentrating on a maths lesson. That child needs to be out of the classroom - for their own sake as much as the sake of the rest of the class. 

Apparently schools can now have many such therapists visiting the school and there are still many parents who need to take their children to physiotherapy, speech therapy and occupational therapy away from the school. It is just one of the many problems which have increased since the closure of specialist facilities.