Do families think therapy works?

Although I truly believe from moment to moment and day to day that I am doing my best as an occupational therapist to help children be functional and successful, I sometimes wonder if I am affecting change. When I come to see a child in his classroom for a half hour and we work on improving pre-writing skills by strengthening his hands and tracing a few letters with proper pencil grasp, I know he is on the way to becoming a more successful student, but did he change between 1:00 and 1:30 on that Thursday? Was my intervention more useful to him than the help of a classroom aide? Did the teacher learn new strategies from my time in the classroom? or does she think I am wasting precious math time?

When I work in schools I rarely have the opportunity to talk to parents to learn how they feel about their child's therapy. Often, I only get to talk to parents at IEP meetings where the most frequent therapy issues seem to be requests for increased service time or not to discontinue services. So, I guess these parents are in favor of their child's therapy.

Any way, I have recently had a couple of fabulous opportunities get parent feedback lately. Of course, with that introduction, you know I heard good things.

First of all, on April 12th, I went to IEP Day (Involved Exceptional Parent Day) in San Diego. I was working at a booth for Sunny Days, which provides early intervention services for 0 - 3 year olds. Although many people were disappointed that they hadn't known about Sunny Days before their children turned 3, there were a few parents there with children who were currently enrolled or had already graduated from early intervention. They raved about the help they and their children had received. One mom said that the behavior therapy consultant changed their lives. Getting the help they needed when they needed it changed the dynamics of their home. The child is now 4 1/2 and very successful at school.

Another person I ran into was the mother of one of my Sunny Days clients. He graduated a year ago now, but I see her occasionally at preschool. She said she frequently gets questions about whether she thinks that the speech and occupational therapy (20 hours per month, combined) really helped him. She said she always tells them that we (the therapists) were great and really helped him overcome his challenges; that we really did affect change.

This whole post may sound as if I am just giving myself props, but I think that it is a serious question for many of us. We can use research-based methods as much as possible, but that doesn't assure success. I also think that if I have these questions, parents, teachers, administrators, and other therapists must also wonder...