Tom Onions
Occupational Therapist
BIOGRAPHY
Tom is an Occupational Therapist who was born in Melbourne and grew up in multiple states around Australia, before settling in WA where he completed his studies. Tom completed a Bachelor of Occupational Therapy with Honours at Curtin University. During his
studies he worked as a Therapy Assistant with Calm and Connected and couldn’t resist continuing with the team as an Occupational Therapist. His time working as a Therapy Assistant reinforced his passion to want to work to support children to achieve their own goals. Tom loves to be outdoors and is a hands on person. His love for sport is shown as he spends most weekends out watching or reffing rugby. A keen interest for Tom is the Sense Rugby program that Calm and Connected run, as well as all of the therapy intensive camps on offer. It provides an opportunity to mix both his work and personal interests to support his clients.
APPROACH
Tom takes a person-centred, strengths based and sensory informed approach to therapy and believes in meeting his clients at their level by focusing on their interests and making sessions fun. Although Tom gradated as a practitioner in 2021, you will notice his maturity from his experience as a Therapy Assistant at Calm and Connect, his therapy sessions and collaborative communication is professional and clear with the clients in the centre of his focus. Tom has a keen interest in sports and the outdoors and using these occupations to engage and develop his client’s skills and capacity. Tom has incorporated these beliefs into his practice by participating in many camps offered by Calm and Connected including the mountain bike camps, Camp Confidence and Boys camps. Tom has a passion for rugby, reffing rugby in his spare time and has incorporated this love through running the sense rugby program offered by Calm and Connected focusing on supporting the children to participate in a team sports and building their social skills. as well as the sense rugby program.
CERTIFIED IN
Completed an undergraduate Bachelor of Science in Occupational Therapy (Honours) in
2021 – Project title: Autism Friendly Hospital.Membership of Occupational Therapy Australia and Western Australia Occupational
Therapy AssociationTrauma Informed Approach to Sensory processing Disorder & Arousal Regulation by Sheila
Frick 2021Team Teach – Tutor Behaviour De-escalation and Positive Handling Training (2022)
Provisional NDIS Behaviour Support Practitioner
Vital Links by Sheila Frick
The SpIRiT of Pediatric Therapy by Tracy Stackhouse, 2022