OT ROAD ON THE
Aaron Preston, the founder of The Great Little OT Practice, tells us about a project he took on last March to deliver OT to children in the Scottish Highlands
C
an you explain a little about your practice and the changes you have had to make during the pandemic?
The Great Little OT Practice is a family-owned, independent OT practice based in North Essex. We focus exclusively on the treatment of children and young people and our passion is helping young people to be as independent as possible. We are able to provide comprehensive OT support to children with various conditions ranging from mild delay through to complex brain injury and autism. I set the company up in 2018 and we have gone from strength to strength, meaning that we have been able to expand the service we offer as well as the team we have in place. We now have me and three additional professionals. Nobody could have predicted the scale of the pandemic and it seemed to hit all sectors hard almost immediately, this was certainly not what I had anticipated within the first two years of practice. The very nature of our practice means that we are working face-to-face with some of the most vulnerable young people in society. Face-to-face therapy stopped overnight and we had to
think very quickly around how we could continue to support these families at arm’s length throughout the first lockdown. We were able to switch our business model to a virtual one within a few days, this enabled therapy to continue for some of the families and meant that as a business we were able to ride out the lack of income which lasted for almost four months. The virtual model is not suitable for all children and it requires a confident person at the other end of the lens to facilitate instructions as well as additional planning and materials from the OT. Those that did engage well continued to make progress, it also provided a valuable link during what was and still is a challenging time for everyone. Our return to work in June was littered with confusion over PPE, risk assessments, dilemmas over what equipment we can and can’t take, but we found our way through and have been back successfully seeing families again which has been amazing. Our earlier experiences with virtual working during the first lockdown meant that in lockdown 2.0 we were able to refer back to that model as well as see those families that were happy to have us visit them in their homes. How did your work in the Scottish Highlands come about? Being my own boss has led to various things that I never thought possible, the one I am most proud of is the links we now have with the Scottish Highlands. Last year I was contacted via my social media pages by a daily from Inverness. They had already had a physiotherapist and conductive educator travel up to offer an intensive week of therapy for various children with additional needs, and wondered if this is something I would consider. I had never done anything like that before, it sounded exciting but slightly worrying at the same time! What would I need for the week of intensive therapy 600 miles from home with children I have never met before? How would I manage to deliver it? Obviously, I jumped at the chance and my first trip up there was in March 2020, just before the country went into lockdown.
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