Making all the right moves : clinician-led development and pilot of an evaluative toolkit for a community-based school readiness group program

Introduction: Children often present to occupational therapy with delays in pre-school occupations, with underlying skill deficits. If unaddressed, deficits may affect adjustment to school, jeopardising educational progress. Although evidence supports group-based interventions, evaluation can be time-intensive and expensive. We developed and piloted an evaluative toolkit to measure and report outcomes for short school readiness groups. Method: We sought measures that were inexpensive, reliable and responsive to change in key domains. Skills and pre-school occupations were measured in children [n = 58; mean = 5 years] before and after our school starters group program. Parents rated their children's skills, school readiness and level of school-related anxiety. Results: Our resource-efficient, multi-measure, skills-based evaluative toolkit reliably recorded changes in children's performance in our school readiness program. Measures were adapted for groups. Children demonstrated improvements in skills important for successful school transition pre-post program; including static and dynamic balance, pencil grasp/control, pre-writing/drawing skills and name writing. Parents' confidence in their child's readiness for school increased, while school-related-anxiety decreased. Conclusion: The evaluative toolkit proved responsive to change and showed excellent inter-rater reliability. Measures were practicable for groups, easy to administer and score, and engaged parents in their child's progress. In our six-session School Starters group, important pre-school skills were improved in participating children.