About Stepping Stones Is your child having difficulties with participating fully in their life? Are they less independent than you would like? Stepping Stones can help. We offer a wide range of occupational therapy services to assist you in helping your child to develop the skills and confidence they need to flourish. We see children from birth to 18 years and can offer a comprehensive assessment and individualised interventions to meet the needs of your child. We are available to see children in our clinics, their own homes, at school or in the community. Occupational Therapists (OT’s) are registered health professionals who help people overcome challenges in their everyday occupations. You might wonder what occupations your child has, and the answer to that is many! The primary occupation of childhood is play. Your child will spend many hours of the day engaged in different types of play activities, and during this time they are busy developing essential physical, sensory, social, emotional and cognitive (i.e., thinking) skills that lay the foundations for success in later life. Other childhood occupations include self-care tasks (e.g., feeding yourself, having a bath, washing your hair, getting dressed, doing up buttons and shoelaces etc.) and activities of productivity (e.g. kindy/school activities, handwriting, using scissors, doing chores etc.). Stepping Stones OT’s are trained to assess your child’s performance in these areas in order to determine the specific barriers to their success. Using this information we can then design a treatment program to meet your child’s individual needs. We then work with you in order to help your understanding and to give you practical tools and advice that you can use at home.

Merewether Heights Public School, located in the school district of Newcastle, was established in 1970. The school has always enjoyed the support and interest of the parent community. It is a friendly school where the students have made positive efforts to be cooperative and caring towards one another. The school is proud of its fine academic standards. Students are encouraged by parents and teachers to pursue learning success and to achieve to the best of their ability, and this is reflected in the school motto Strive for Excellence. The school is officially open on school days from 9.00 am to 3.25 pm. At other times, including public holidays and weekends, the school is closed. Pupils are not permitted in the school grounds outside school hours unless under the supervision of an adult who has the permission of the school principal or the Out of School Hours (OOSH) care service.