Open for 2018
Student applications
Join our Occupational Therapy Team for the week
The Sensory Gym is once again sponsoring Camp Jabiru. It's the tenth anniversary for camp! We need student volunteers to make this experience as rich as possible for the children.
Jabiru is a uniquely rich occupational therapy environment in that it provides the possibility for observing the child in all of his/her occupational roles across a wider variety of experiences. The child at camp is a learner, a player, a friend, and a member of a “family” or a group. By far, the most important of these roles at camp is that of a friend. For the most part, these are children who are not successful socially in their typical daily life. It will be the family’s most sincere desire that their child has a friend and be a friend during the week of camp.
Camp also provides the opportunity to observe the child through many of the activities and transitions that accompany a typical “day in the life” of the child as a family member. Being a first-hand witness and support to behaviours around routines such as meal times, dressing, toileting, and sleeping and waking (if an overnight camper) allows us to offer much more informed support for the families around these same events at home and school.
OT STUDENT RESPONSIBILITIES:
- Anything assigned to you by your group leader (so flexibility and the willingness to “go with the flow” is essential)
- Implementation of therapeutic techniques
- Leading games and activities
- 1:1 intervention with a child
- At least one shift of sleeping overnight in a children’s cabin (OT students must stay overnight at the camp)
- At least one shift of dining with an overnight group at dinner and/or breakfast
- Set up and clean up of camp each day
- Contribution to the daily camp newspaper (several students will need to bring laptop computers to camp – it is a very safe environment for your personal belongings)
- Photographic record of each camper’s experience (each student must have a digital camera for use at camp)
BENEFITS TO THE OT STUDENT:
Very hands-on experience
Immersion experience into “what is a sensory processing challenge?” and “how do disruptions in sensory processing affect daily life?”
Full spectrum ideological approaches toward meaningful human occupation
Implementation of a full gamut of occupational therapy tools and strategies from an eclectic base, so that individualization of programming needs per child can occur
Access to some of the brightest clinicians in Australia for problem-solving and clinical reasoning
Access to venerated master clinicians from the United States (there will be at least 3 mentor therapists from the US at camp helping to support the entire experience)
A LOT OF FUN