What is the Children's Occupational Therapy Service?
Our Occupational Therapists provide a high quality service to children and young people in Harrow.
It is provided by the Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust.
Occupational Therapy (OT) Service: March 2026 Update for Families
We wanted to share an update on the progress we’re making to strengthen the OT service for children and young people.
What’s going well
We are successfully building up the OT team using new funding. Three of our seven brand new clinical posts have now been permanently recruited to (two specialist and two highly specialist therapists), and we have also engaged some agency support whilst more recruitment takes place. As of March three colleagues have already started, and a fourth will join us later this month.
More children are now receiving OT support. Since February half term, we’ve been able to reopen more of the service and increase therapy time in both mainstream and special schools. We are starting with schools with the highest concentration of children and young people who have been waiting the longest for their provision.
More provision is being delivered. Around 45% of the caseload are now receiving some OT support, which already represents an increase from where things were a few months ago. We recognise this isn’t enough, and are rapidly scaling this up as more recruitment is completed.
We are continuing to support pre school children transferring into school-age services.
We are developing a universal offer for roll out.
This will include a training offer for parents and carers.
What’s happening next
More recruitment is underway. Further interviews for the remaining posts are booked for late March. Once these roles are filled, we will advertise the final OT Assistant post so that person can be fully supported in their role.
We hope to have full staffing by September 2026, unless there are unexpected delays.
Assessment pathways will begin to reopen further in the summer term.
We have been operating an assessment-and-discharge model, and we are planning to increase assessment capacity as new staff settle in.
What this means for families
You should see:
- more therapists available in settings
- more children and young people receiving provision identified in their EHCP
- increasing access to assessments and support over the coming months
We will continue to provide updates as staffing and capacity grow.
Darren Turze, Head of Harrow Children's Community Health Services and Cathrine Milmine Head of SEND Strategy, Assessment and Review