Rule Number 1: Assessment is the key to every activity and recommendation provided by the OT

Assessment; What is intervention without assessment? It is a shot in the dark. It is a “I hope this works”, instead of “I know exactly what areas of development need to be worked on both in intervention and at home therefore we target these as best we can”. Whats important to remember is that every meeting with the child is a chance for an assessment. We will always ascertain new information from an adaptive response. We are continuously assessing, even after the assessment is complete. 
In the words of Kath smith: we must be tough in assessment and kind in intervention.  On the assessment day, I will always take into account what the parent says about their child’s ability, however I will not score it if I don’t see it. I am tough with the assessment, only because most of the assessments I do are standardised, therefore there is a process I follow to ensure I complete the assessment in an ethical manner. I will always complete a standardised assessment with a child on the first meeting with them. I pick the assessment to use after meeting with the parent during the parent interview. The assessment is a lengthy process which consists of a parent interview (usually completed via zoom), a clinic assessment which can take anywhere from 1 hour to 4 hours and sometimes it is spread over 2 days. 
Assessments used: Parental interview  Pre school/School/crèche interview  clinical observations standardised fine motor, gross motor, cognitive, sensory, social emotional assessments  Parental questionnaires

After the Interpreting the results of all the assessments, I write up the assessment report. This usually takes about 7 hours. Then I will complete the report feedback session with parents over a zoom call, which usually takes an hour.