Leaping Forward # 13: A proper look at systems theory helps get the therapist to the child, not the child to the therapist - PART1

Leaping Forward in the development of early child & family support and protecting childhood

This is the 13^th article in the 'Leaping Forward' series.

Major obstacles in supporting the development and learning of an infant or young child occur when paediatric therapists are based in hospitals, centres or clinics and require the parent and child to come to them.

The disadvantages include:

• The child enters an unfamiliar clinical environment and perhaps at a time that does not suit her or his daily routines.
• Inclusion in natural social and educational places is interrupted, with family (and perhaps the child) developing the idea that the child is a patient with an illness to be treated.
• The activities the therapist offers might bear no relation to the child’s current interests or to the aims of other people supporting the child’s development and learning (in posture, movement, communication, cognition, dexterity, etc.).
• Visits to therapists can require expensive travel and are time consuming and energy-sapping.
• While the therapist’s work is held separate from the work of others around the child, opportunities for the therapy programmes to be continued between sessions can be curtailed.

How can systems theory help solve this?

Systems theory shows us that the people around the child will do better if they join themselves into a proper System with a joint approach and common aims. This new team will achieve much more than can the separate people in it – with more energy, more creativity, more consistency.

So the systems approach is for the therapist to go where the child is, to become part of the team around the child and to add her or his knowledge and skills to those of the others. All of the team’s play/therapy/work is merged into the child’s natural activity – nothing special or strange or frightening.

Perhaps the therapist will be the least regular and constant member of the team so he or she will, as appropriate, pass their knowledge and skills to the other team members as the child progresses.

The magic of this systems approach to paediatric therapy is that it takes pressure off the child, parent and therapist and protects the child’s quality of life - protecting and respecting her or his childhood

Peter Limbrick, August 2024

See: Positive environments for early child and family support. Part 6: contrasting a therapy approach with an educational approach to the early skill of moving on the floor