Across the lifespan
To understand how sensory integration theory and practice have been extended into adult mental health and wider NHS services.
ISIC Sydney 2024 · conference archive
From adult mental health practice to an ASI care pathway.
Katie Crowfoot and Kath Smith shared a virtual presentation connecting long-standing NHS practice development with co-production, proportionate assessment and data-informed decision-making.
Hello Australia
Sharing the work from afar
Although our team could not travel to Australia, we were pleased to support the International Sensory Integration Congress in Sydney and to see colleagues from the UK and Ireland contributing to the programme.
Our virtual presentation explored how Ayres’ Sensory Integration® has been taken beyond its more familiar childhood context and developed within adult mental health services. The focus was not a single intervention or diagnosis. It was the process of building a thoughtful care pathway around participation, lived experience, occupational therapy reasoning and the level of support each person may need.
- Congress
- International Sensory Integration Congress
- Place
- Sydney, Australia
- Dates
- 28–30 October 2024
- Presented by
- Katie Crowfoot and Kath Smith
- Format
- Virtual presentation
The presentation
Ayres’ Sensory Integration care pathway development for adult mental health within the NHS
The session brought together the history of this work, the emerging practice evidence and a practical pathway for using sensory information to strengthen occupational therapy decisions.
Data-informed decisions
To explore how assessment findings, clinical observation, occupational priorities and review data can guide proportionate intervention.
Participation and recovery
To consider how sensory integration-informed reasoning may support engagement, everyday occupation and recovery-oriented care.
A developing practice history
From early service learning to a clearer pathway
The Sydney presentation did not begin with a new online resource. It grew from more than two decades of work within and alongside adult mental health services.
Early service evaluation
Practice data from Be SMaRT™ explored sensory integration-informed occupational therapy with adults using mental health services.
Published reflection
Brown, Shankar and Smith described the relationship between trauma, sensory processing and adult mental health practice. Read the article.
Practice revisited
Katie Crowfoot presented a later NHS clinical audit and practice development project that revisited related questions in a contemporary adult service. Explore the poster.
Pathway shared in Sydney
The learning was organised into a developing care pathway and shared with the international sensory integration community at ISIC 2024.
What makes this a pathway?
A connected process, not a list of sensory strategies
The pathway keeps the person’s occupations and priorities in view while matching the depth of assessment and intervention to what is actually needed.
Begin with participation
Understand what the person wants or needs to do, what is currently difficult and what matters in their daily life.
Assess proportionately
Bring together history, observation, sensory information and occupational performance, using specialist assessment when indicated.
Co-produce the plan
Translate findings into language and support that make sense to the person, their life, their environment and their relationships.
Review what changes
Use meaningful outcomes and ongoing review to decide whether support should continue, change or move to a different level.
Sensory Ladders®, Spiders™ and Grids™ can help make experience and assessment findings easier to discuss. They support co-production; they do not replace occupational therapy assessment or specialist Ayres’ Sensory Integration assessment when this is required.
Evidence with care
Promising service learning is not definitive proof.
Clear evidence boundaries make practice development more credible and help us ask better research questions.
What the service findings can tell us
Earlier service evaluation and later clinical audit described encouraging changes within the services in which the work took place, including engagement in therapy and daily life, use of support and patterns of admission. These findings helped shape the care pathway and identify what should be examined next.
What they cannot establish on their own
Service evaluation, audit and conference presentations cannot by themselves establish that an approach is effective for every person, service or diagnostic group. They do not remove the need for careful assessment, comparison, peer review and further research.
The Sydney presentation therefore shared a developing, evidence-informed model: one grounded in practice data, co-production and occupational therapy reasoning, while remaining open about the questions that still need to be tested.
Continue exploring
Related conference and practice pages
Conference article
Join us at ISIC 2024
Read the original preview of the Sydney congress, its theme and the wider programme.
Read the article → Earlier presentationAdult mental health practice
Explore Katie Crowfoot’s 2023 poster on occupational therapy and sensory integration.
Explore the poster → AssessmentAcross-the-lifespan tools
Read more about assessment, clinical observation and co-produced planning approaches.
Read the overview →