Supporting a Person with a Sensory Processing Disorder

All About You Supports has been assisting a 20-year-old client who is living at home with their parents in Wallsend. The client’s parents are the primary carers.

When we first began working together in 2018 this person was an existing NDIS participant with a major NDIS Plan review approaching. The family felt they needed support in order to navigate this review.

Initial assessment with AAYS

This client is mute and was demonstrating signs of sensory overload together with other challenging behaviours.

Our role began with in-depth discussions with the family in order to fully understand the challenges being faced and to determine how we could help.

The client had been a registered NDIS participant since 2016, but the family’s experiences had been challenging. This included:

Having minimal contact with their support coordinator
Not having an understanding of what resources were available to them
Not having an understanding of how to best use their plan

Preparing for a major NDIS Plan review

We began a comprehensive assessment in order to prepare for the upcoming review.

This process included:

Determining the need for increased resources or services
Goal setting
A Change of Circumstances Support Letter in support of additional resources
Collating reports from different professional therapists who had seen the client in the past
Engaging a Behaviour Therapist to draw up a Behaviour Intervention Plan
Engaging an Occupational Therapist to undertake a Functional Assessment and a Sensory Assessment

Challenges & considerations

Given their previous experiences, the client’s family was initially unsure about whether All About You Supports could genuinely help them.

Understandably, it took reassurance from our team across multiple discussions to earn their trust.

In addition, the family dynamic was somewhat strained. The client’s behaviour was sometimes challenging. This needed to be addressed, so we set up a whole-family session with the Behaviour Therapist. This session aimed to unite the family and discuss the best ways to communicate with the client to decrease the likelihood of them becoming confused or unsettled.

We were also able to contribute by achieving a number of nights of short-term accommodation for the client, giving the family an informal break from their role as primary carers.

Interventions & outcomes

We were able to secure more support and funding from the NDIS at the review.

Together with the resulting interventions, this has had a significant effect on the participant’s quality of life and their ability to maintain independence.

One example of this was that the client’s initial evaluations had revealed a sensory processing disorder. The Behaviour Therapist noted that the participant was often fidgeting, moving around and seeking something to touch or feel.

They recommended that an Occupational Therapist conduct a sensory processing assessment to find ways to support the participant both in the home and in the community.

The resulting recommendations have had a big impact for the client. They included:

Regular visits to gardens and parks where the participant can feel different textures on trees, plants and surfaces
A sensory board for use at home
A sensory bean bag for use at home
Attending Short Term Accommodation to give everybody respite
Ongoing sessions with the Behaviour Therapist
Training from the Behavior Therapist for the carers

The participant loves visits to the park and using the new home equipment.

These are all new experiences and they have led to a marked positive change in the participant’s behaviours and general disposition.

Feedback from the family

Having worked together for over two years now, AAYS have had significant positive feedback from this client’s family.

They joke with us about how unsure they were to begin with, because they also tell us that they feel our interventions have helped them ‘maximise their relationship with their child‘. Behavioural improvements mean that they don’t have to always be on guard anymore.

One of the key things our practitioners have taken away from this case is the reminder that even small interventions – a sensory beanbag, a change in communication style – can have a significant and lasting impact for clients and their carers.