Listen to this fascinating feature interview with Sue Allen, MSc, BSc(Hons), Occupational Therapist, on her research and work on supporting mothers of children with sensory integration difficulties. Sue presented on this topic at the Sensory Integration Education Conference 2021: The Future is Sensory and in this interview she discusses her findings and ongoing investigations on this topic. Sue supports undergraduates at Wrexham Glyndwr University and the postgraduates at Sheffield Hallam University. She is currently undertaking a PhD in Psychology with University of Reading exploring the impact of sensory integration difficulties on family life and strategies to enhance participation. Transcript Gina So welcome, Sue. It's lovely to chat to you this evening for SensorNet, our SIE publication, which we're hoping to have out at the end of this month. And I felt it was really ample timing after your presentation at the Future Sensory Conference on your research on supporting mothers of children with sensory integration difficulties to do a bit of a follow on chat and discussion around your research and hear a bit more from you. So welcome Sue Allen, and thank you for taking the time. Brilliant so, Sue, to start off our discussion, I was wondering, could you tell us briefly about your current role and where your research work is currently focused? Sue Allen OK, so currently, I'm a part time lecturer at Wrexham Glyndŵr University in the lovely North Wales, and I do a tiny bit of private practice just because I love it I can't quite let go. I have some mentoring roles and I'm doing my PhD with the University of Reading, driven by an interest in how we support parents and whether we can do a better job and the difference it makes. Gina Super so, you're a busy woman with all the different roles in place, and I knew when I was reading a bit about your career to date and I saw that you have worked in Kaleidoscope Therapy Centre in Singapore and I was really interested to hear your experience of working in a different culture outside of Ireland and the UK. And how did SI practice differ and how did you feel you were able to use SI your approach in that clinic? Sue Allen OK so I think, you know, when you're using Ayres' SI it's consistent, you know, the Fidelity tools show us that. I was working in the private sector, which of course, differs from state sector in the NHS or the state sector in Ireland. So you have the luxury in that context of being able to provide higher levels of intervention, which is a luxury but wonderful to be able to see the impact of that. So I would say there's many more similarities than differences and that having worked across the UK and the USA as well as Asia, the clinical reasoning is consistent, but every family is unique and our starting point needs to be the understanding of their kind of beliefs, values and motivations and goals of each family group. So MOHO was a little bit helpful for me in terms of reflecting on that, kind of, assuming nothing and respecting everything. Yeah and I think when we practice in whatever context the trust our families place in us is a kind of a fragile gift. And I guess the shift that I made in different cultural contexts was slowing down my practice to increase my awareness and understanding of each child and the kind of social and environmental context. You know, Singapore is very family orientated, so you are often dealing with large, multi-generational families in work, which gives its own opportunities, but also its own challenges. So I guess one of the things I learned was that grannies are very important. That's a really key role in what goes on within families. So really tuning into where the drivers within the family are. Yeah, I think that's... Gina Yeah, and I think that's really interesting, because when I was listening to your presentation on your research, you were saying about the importance of education like outside of the parents as well as extended family, and the importance of this was involving all of the people in an individual's life. So I think that is really telling in that culture that grandparents and grannies in particular were playing such an important role. And I think they do even in the UK and Ireland as well, especially with my own experience here in Ireland, grannies are often childcare and are involved in the after school and those kind of things. So I think that's really interesting. And I think as therapists, it's probably something that I love to pick your brain a bit more about as we go on, so we might get some tips and strategies around how we can, how we can do that and improve that as well. So I suppose moving on then, I'd love to hear about what sparked your interest on the topic of supporting mothers of children with SI difficulties, you know, possibly it might have been something you were seeing from practice, or that you were kind of experiencing yourself as a clinician and maybe that drew you...
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33 mins