Clinical Services

PassionpilOT takes a rights-based approach to consider how power dynamics
between children and grown-ups influence children’s responses and decision
making. At all stages of the therapeutic process, PassionpilOT prioritises
empowering young people to understand their own bodies, and identify and express their needs in, and beyond, therapy.

PassionpilOT acknowledges, with humility, the skills and expertise caregivers have
in observing and understanding their child. This therapy service does not preference
the expertise of credentialed experts above those who know and love a young
person, and seeks to meaningfully engage with families at all stages of the
therapeutic process.

In delivering therapy, the Occupational Therapist will also recognise that even a child
described as having limited insight can have surprisingly helpful insights into the
solutions to a challenge. The PassionpilOT therapy process supports young people
to explore solutions that “stick” for them, and to build the skills to identify new
solutions to challenges as they arise in the places they want and need to be.

PassionpilOT’s therapy service is designed to be responsive to the needs and skills of all those who are important to a child and their developmental goals.

This can include a treating team of therapists, but may also include educators, extended family, babysitters, support workers, friends, and neighbours.
Therapy services are built to fit within what is realistic for families in any given week, and are flexible to the changes and seasons of family life and childhood.
PassionpilOT services also acknowledge what is practical to progress in a home environment, and that the most important role for all those in a child’s ecosystem is to love and delight in the child.

PassionpilOT’s therapy services are heavily influenced by the research of Dr Ross
Greene and Dr Mona Delahooke on child behaviour, and are built on the
underpinning value that young people do well when they can. The therapist will
support the detective work involved in understanding the nature of skills a child may
not yet have acquired, and support young people and their families to make
necessary accommodations and build the skills they need to improve their
experience of the world.

Play is not a break from learning — it is the mechanism of it. Children engage most
deeply, build skills most durably, and tolerate challenge most willingly when the work
is grounded in what genuinely delights them.
A child's passionate interest in Taylor Swift, Minecraft, trains, or the precise
aerodynamics of paper planes is not a distraction from therapy. It is the starting
point. The therapist's job is to understand what lights a young person up — and meet
them there.
This is not merely a motivational strategy. Curiosity, pleasure, and intrinsic
motivation create the neurological conditions in which new skills are most readily
acquired and retained. Joy is not a reward for hard work. It is the mechanism by which hard work becomes possible.
PassionpilOT therapy is designed to be something a child wants to come back to.