The findings indicated that teachers and occupational therapists were using collaborative team practices, such as jointly developing goals and objectives, collaboration within the classrooms, jointly monitoring interventions, and jointly reviewing student progress. However, scheduling team meetings was difficult. The majority of respondents stated that occupational therapy contributed to student skill development, and as collaboration practices increased, the teachers' perceptions of occupational therapy contribution to student skill development increased. A significant negative correlation was found between the percentage of IEP objectives met variable and three collaborative variables--team meetings, reviewing progress, and develop goals and objectives. This finding indicated that as the frequency of these team processes increased, fewer objectives were met.

The purpose of this study was to identify the perceived appropriateness, extent, and types of services provided by occupational therapists to children with emotional disturbances in public schools. A nationally mailed survey was conducted of randomly selected school occupational therapists derived from the American Occupational Therapy Association School System Special Interest Section list. The sampling frame was 982 with a response rate of 48% (n = 476). Eighty-seven percent of all respondents were supportive of school occupational therapy for students with emotional disturbances, although these students made up only a small proportion of their caseload. The therapists indicated that a variety of intervention approaches were used with most targeting educational areas, especially handwriting. The most commonly reported intervention was sensory integration. Many respondents perceived that they could not provide effective interventions because they were not appropriately trained. Perceived lack of knowledge and confusion about occupational therapy's role may lead to underutilization of occupational therapy for addressing the complex needs of children with emotional disturbances. Further research and discussion are needed in the profession to arrive at consensus regarding what approaches are most appropriate and effective in schools.

Children with emotional disturbance frequently have difficulty regulating their classroom behaviors. Many have co-occurrence of other disabilities, such as sensory processing problems, which compound difficulties in school participation. This exploratory project evaluated the 8-week-long use of the Alert Program within the classroom setting for seven children with emotional disturbance. Five children with emotional disturbance served as a control group. Self-regulation, behavioral adjustments, and sensory processing skills as reported by the children and teachers were evaluated. Changes from pretest to posttest indicated that children who received the Alert Program demonstrated a small improvement on all measures while performance of the control group remained relatively constant or decreased. These preliminary results indicate programs that target self-regulation skills may be useful in helping to improve self-regulation of children with emotional disturbance.

No abstract

The purpose of this study was to obtain preliminary data concerning the effectiveness of two treatment procedures—weight bearing on extended arms and passive trunk rotation—on the development of prehension skills. A multiple baseline across subjects, with reversal phases, research design was used. Measurement procedures were designed to be sensitive to small behavioral changes in the prehension skills of three children with spastic cerebral palsy. Eight movement components of reach, grasp, and release were measured. Prehension skills of all three subjects showed improvement as a result of weight bearing on extended arms. No measurable changes were observed as a result of passive trunk rotation. Results indicate that this type of measurement procedure is sensitive to the small behavioral changes seen frequently in the treatment of cerebral palsy.