Accreditation is a function that ensures quality in higher education. Many accreditation functions in higher education are regional, and schools must engage those accreditation processes in order for students attending to be eligible for many forms of financial aid. Many professional educational programs are also accredited by discipline specific organizations , which are in turn themselves monitored by national accreditors . In sum, there are multiple layers to the educational accreditation process that all serve as a quasi-public protection to ensure quality. The occupational therapy profession has a discipline specific accreditor, named the Accreditation Council for Occupational Therapy Education (ACOTE). This group has a statement on educational quality that can be found here. This policy states that a profession is distinguished by a variety of factors. Among these are a set of recognized educational standards for professional preparation; a credentialing mechanism
Each year I receive several emails from colleagues about 'retained primitive reflexes.' I am also seeing an increased number of reports from local 'health care' providers who are documenting these alleged problems so I thought I would write a summary of my opinion on this topic. Predatory 'health care' providers including some OTs, PTs, chiropractors, and behavioral optometrists are creating a new 'market' for treating this alleged 'problem.' Parents should be very wary of these practitioners and other professionals should challenge these practices whenever they are seen. The following is the kind of information that causes concern and was provided to me by a colleague as a sample from a student's IEP: The student continues to demonstrate the following retained primitive reflexes that at times interfere with his ability to demonstrate appropriate adaptive responses: Fear Paralysis Reflex, Moro Reflex, Palmer Reflex, Tonic Labyri
For as long as I can recall most therapists talk about tactile defensiveness as being an oversensitivity to touch - and that it includes a sympathetic nervous system response that is allegedly 'out of proportion' to the incoming stimulus. The result of this characterization is that most people start looking AT the sense of touch as the primary culprit of the problem. This is why you then see therapists struggling to describe what textures a child tolerates and does not tolerate. This structural understanding of the problem is reinforced by sensory integration theory which posits that children are not able to process incoming sensory information accurately. In the real world this model is poorly described and subsequently notoriously unreliable - and again you will hear therapists explain the inconsistency in sensitivity as a "sensory modulation" problem because sometimes certain kinds of touch will be tolerated and other times it will not be tolerated. Still, th
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