Jennifer Oliver MS, OTR/L
Experience
Jennifer Oliver, MS, OTR/L, is a Sensory Integration Certified Occupational Therapist who has been working with children and adults with sensory challenges since receiving her Master’s Degree in Occupational Therapy from Sage Graduate School in 2006. Ms. Oliver went on to complete a year-long post-graduate Ayres Sensory Integration certification program through the University of Southern California’s esteemed Chan School of Occupational Therapy. She is one of only a handful of occupational therapists throughout New York State listed as holding this certification (certificate #1829). Additional continuing education has focused on pediatric interventions, sensory processing and integration, primitive reflex assessment and integration, and evaluation and treatment of feeding disorders.
She has worked to provide fine motor, sensory, and feeding evaluation and treatment in both traditional and non-traditional settings, in collaboration with families, educators, related service providers, and direct care staff. Experience includes pediatric home and community treatment, providing services in integrated and self-contained program classrooms, therapy for children in early intervention toddler groups, preschool related services, sensory evaluation from infants to geriatrics, development of sensory rooms, and day program treatment for adults with developmental disabilities.
Along with her clinical expertise, Ms. Oliver has extensive experience in coaching families to carryover treatment activities outside of therapy sessions. This allows for improved understanding of therapy goals, as well as accelerated progress toward meeting these goals. When parent coaching is focused on sensory modulation and regulation, it is often done in conjunction with information provided by a child’s counselor/behavioral therapist. This results in a highly successful approach where challenging behaviors can be delineated as sensory-based or purely behavioral in nature. With a close working relationship between all parties involved, assessment and intervention can be pinpointed by each discipline to provide more effective and efficient strategies. As with many therapies, parent participation and provider collaboration are key.
