Occupational Therapy with Emotionally Disturbed Children in a Public Elementary School

This article describes a model of delivering occupational therapy services to a class of emotionally disturbed children in a public elementary school. It was determined that many of the children were placed in a special class because of inappropriate social skills. A weekly occupational therapy program was developed to address the chi Y dren's lack of age-appropriate social skills. A task-oriented group was chosen as the format, with activities selected based upon the level of the children's group interaction skills. The children exhibited an improvement in their social skills over the course of the school year.