Introduction: Numerous private occupational therapy clinics have opened since Australia's NDIS was launched. These clinics can be found in standard single-room doctor's offices or a whole house has been transformed into an OT clinic. This article explores the variations in therapy contexts, emphasising on the ways in which children with disabilities engage and develop their skills in diverse clinical settings. Children engage and perform and develop their ability to generalise and acquire new skills in home-based settings.
Aim: To evaluate the performance of children with disabilities during OT sessions across diverse clinical environments.
Methodology: Unstructured observation was employed to evaluate children's engagement, behaviours, attitudes, and social interactions during therapy sessions across various settings, emphasizing the influence of environment on therapeutic outcomes.
Results: Therapy-Engagement: In Home-based settings children interacts more with therapy tasks and the therapist than in traditional clinical offices, suggesting that familiar environments enhance learning.
Skill-Development: Children participate in tabletop activities in both settings, but home-based settings offer customised environment while learning functional activities like eating and writing. Children benefit from learning complex self-care skills like cooking and hygiene in a home-based setting because it offers more immediate and contextual learning experiences than a hospital/clinic setting. Socially, children interact with others in real-world settings and acquire better and faster transferrable skills.
Skill-Generalization: Home-based settings allow children to more easily apply the skills children learnt to their everyday lives. Familiarity of the setting reinforces the practical use of these skills, thereby enhancing retention and application in daily activities.
Conclusion: Home-based settings are effective among children with disabilities. It plays a crucial role in skill acquisition and therapy engagement.