Self care skills are often impacted by our sensory processing, fine and gross motor abilities. Therefore sessions would focus on developing these underlying needs alongside the functional task. Functional tasks would be identified as part of the assessment and goal setting process.

Self care skills can be impacted by a number of factors including the following:

1. Regulation - This can affect ability to focus and organise the body to complete self care tasks

2. Sensory sensitivity - This can make it hard to tolerate certain sensations in self care tasks e.g. fabrics for dressing, the feeling of water on the skin

3. Registering sensations - This can make it difficult to recognise things such as if your clothes are dirty, if you need to wash and if you have food around your face

4. Fine motor skills - This can make the manipulation of items difficult such as being able to fasten buttons or tie shoelaces

5. Gross motor skills - This can make it challenging to complete tasks such as maintaining balance whilst dressing

Some signs that your child is struggling with self care tasks are:

• Difficulty following a morning or evening routine.

• Getting upset during tasks e.g. washing or grooming.

• Poor focus meaning these tasks take longer than expected.

• Needing regular prompts as they have difficulty sequencing tasks.