2027 Occuplaytional Therapist X Neurowild - SYDNEY

Supporting children can be messy. The environments we work in are often complex, expectations can be unrealistic, and even the most skilled and caring adults can find themselves wondering, What do we do when everything feels hard?

Doing Our Best in a Dumpster Fire is a practical, compassionate day for therapists, parents and educators who support children whose needs don’t always fit neatly into the systems around them.

Together, Em and Mick will explore what sits underneath children’s capacity to learn, connect, communicate and cope - and what happens when that capacity is stretched. The day will bring together perspectives on regulation, safety, relationships, collaboration and wellbeing, with a strong focus on what adults can actually do in the moments that matter.

Rather than offering another list of things children should be doing, this workshop invites us to look differently at what children are communicating through their behaviour and what they need from the adults around them. It also recognises that supporting children starts with recognising the capacity and wellbeing of the adults doing the supporting.

Expect practical ideas, opportunities to apply your learning, and plenty of honest discussion about working within imperfect environments. Because we can’t always change the whole system - but we can change how we understand what’s happening and how we respond.

Who is this workshop for? Therapists, parents, and educators.

 

PROGRAM

8:30-9:00am Registration

9:00-9:40am Building Blocks presented by Em Hammond. Em will explore the foundation of the things that people need, like felt safety and bodily regulation, in order to get to higher-level things like academic learning and executive functioning.
9:40-9:50am - Activity/Applied Learning
9:50-10:30am - Basics of Body Regulation presented by Mick Olds. Mick will talk about the regulation pathways in the body and how proprioceptive sensory input is foundational for supporting children in developing regulation or seeking self-regulation for the adults.

10:30-11:00am Morning Tea

11:00-11:40am Relational Safety presented by Em Hammond. Em will use a concrete illustration to explain the way that children accumulate positive, negative, or neutral experiences of safety based on their interactions with any person, and begin predicting their future experiences with them and behaving adaptively accordingly.
11:40-11:50am - Activity/Applied Learning
11:50-12:30pm - Collaborating After High Control presented by Mick Olds. Mick will discuss how children in high-control settings (such as school, home, or therapy) may adapt in order to cope, and ways that collaborative adults can build or repair that collaborating skill to support them as much as possible even while they may still have to navigate imperfect settings.

12:30pm-1:00pm Lunch

1:00pm-1:40pm When You Feel Better, Do Better presented by Mick Olds. Mick will talk about the way that everyone’s capacity to do better improves when they feel better — the teachers, parents, and caregivers included — and give practical advice for how to seek out feel-good strategies (rooted in sensory strategies and theory about leisure and rest), to help stay feeling better when things are hard.
1:40-1:50am - Activity/Applied Learning
1:50-2:30pm - Meeting Everyone Where They’re At presented by Em Hammond. Em will give practical, concrete advice for supporting the kids who fall through the cracks — especially kids with fluctuating capacity, kids with PDA, and kids with RSD or who fawn and people please as a defense mechanism.

2:30pm - Event concludes

 

REGISTRATION FEES

General : $399 per person

Group rate (where 5 or more staff from the same school or organisation are booked and paid together): $359 per person

 

PAYMENT OPTIONS

For bookings made by credit card, a tax invoice will be issued by Trybooking with your confirmation email. 

Need a tax invoice* prior to payment? Simply enter the code 'INVOICE' into the 'Gift/Promotional Code' section of your cart. No payment will be required and an invoice will be issued to the billing address provided within 2 working days. 

*Please note registrations are considered confirmed on submission of the booking and event terms and conditions will apply. Payment terms are 7 days from date of invoice issue. 

 

TERMS AND CONDITIONS