Allison Foster Occupational Therapist

11/09/2025

Parent support isn’t about having all the answers—it’s about having someone to walk alongside you, offering tools, encouragement, and strategies that fit your family’s unique journey. Together, we can nurture strong foundations that set children up to thrive.
Supporting children’s individuality helps them grow with confidence, embrace their strengths, and feel valued for who they truly are.

05/09/2025

A strong parent–child connection builds trust, confidence, and a sense of belonging. This bond shapes not only childhood, but a lifetime of resilience and love.
Happy Father’s Day to all the dads, granddads, and father figures. Thank you for your love, guidance, and the special connections that shape little lives in big ways.

04/09/2025

Masking is when a person hides or changes parts of who they are—like their feelings, behaviors, or natural way of communicating—to fit in or meet the expectations of others.
For neurodivergent children, this might look like copying peers, forcing eye contact, staying very quiet, or suppressing stimming. While masking can sometimes help them get through social situations, it’s tiring and can lead to stress, anxiety, or burnout.

In occupational therapy, we encourage children to be themselves and unmask because true growth happens when they feel safe, accepted, and understood. Masking can be exhausting and limit participation in meaningful activities. By supporting authenticity, we build confidence, reduce stress, and help children develop skills in ways that align with their strengths and unique needs.

04/09/2025

There’s a well-known Chinese proverb, often attributed to the Chinese philosopher Confucius: “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”

This idea connects beautifully with occupational therapy. Rather than doing things for someone, OT focuses on building the skills, confidence, and strategies so they can do it for themselves. Whether it’s learning to dress, cook, write, or regulate emotions, OT is about fostering independence and meaningful participation in daily life.

OT is not about handing over the fish—it’s about supporting people to find their own fishing rod, learn the skills, and thrive in their own way.

03/09/2025

Top-Down vs Bottom-Up Approaches in Therapy

In occupational therapy, we often use two approaches to support skill development:

🔹 Top-Down: Focuses on meaningful activities first – we look at the whole task and how to make it easier or more successful (e.g., practicing dressing to build independence).

🔹 Bottom-Up: Focuses on the underlying skills needed to complete tasks – like strength, coordination, or attention (e.g., building hand strength to improve dressing skills).

Your occupational therapist will determine which approach best suits your child to build confidence, independence, and success in everyday life.

19/06/2025

Thank you for allowing the OTs time and a voice.

I met today with a group of local Occupational Therapists, Speech Therapists and Physiotherapists today to discuss the consequences on NDIS participants of the recent pricing changes for critical allied health services by the National Disability Insurance Agency.

There is a lot of discussion in the community about reining in the overall cost of the NDIS scheme, ensuring that it delivers its original purpose.

After my discussion today with this strong group of local health professionals, its clear that this latest decision to achieve this aim is not the right one.

The government's intent to cut costs will simply reduce service delivery in the home and natural environment and does not meet the clinical needs of patients. People in need in our isolated and smallest communities without public transport will suffer the most.

This city-centric decision compromises the accessibility and safety of critical services to the most vulnerable in our society. It does not appear that the regional impacts were considered and I have deep concerns over the data used.

Everyone deserves access to allied health support regardless of where they live. This decision fails the equality test of the NDIS.

I call on the Albanese Labor Government to go back to the drawing board by overturning the implementation of the cuts on 1 July. We need reform of the NDIS but not this way.

06/06/2025

There are countless ways to communicate—where do I begin? When we embrace and honor every form of expression, we truly honor the human.

20/05/2025

Connect, Connect, Connect

18/05/2025

In occupational therapy (OT), social skills refer to the abilities that enable individuals to interact effectively and authentically with others in a variety of settings. Supporting the development of social skills is especially common in pediatric OT. In our practice we enhance social skills by learning different communication styles, learn to identify own needs and wants, learn interoception body clues, learn spoon theory and identify triggers and glimmers for emotional regulation.

17/05/2025

Time blindness refers to a difficulty with perceiving, estimating, and managing time. It's not a clinical diagnosis but rather a term often used to describe a set of challenges that can affect executive functioning. People who experience time blindness may struggle to:

Notice time passing (e.g., "I didn’t realise three hours had gone by!")

Accurately estimate how long tasks will take

Transition between tasks or activities

Arrive on time or meet deadlines

Support Strategies:
Visual timers and alarms (e.g., Time Timer, phone reminders)

Calendars and planners, especially with color coding

Body doubling (working alongside someone for accountability)

Chunking time into smaller, manageable parts

Externalising time—making time visible and tangible

Routines and structured schedules

26/03/2025

Great post, I am just coming to the end of a social skills program with Bridges Learning System and can't wait to measure the development in self confidence, self esteem, self efficiency and self advocacy in my young participants.