Amanda Adamson

Amanda (Mandy) Adamson MSc in Occupational Therapy, accredited university lecturer and online tutor.

Mandy has worked for over 30 years as an Occupational Therapist and as a Community Occupational Therapist. In addition, she works as a therapist in a Transdisciplinary AHP Team at the Children’s Hospital, Edinburgh working in collaboration with education staff to support children with additional support needs access the curriculum. Mandy’s expertise and clinical insight in Ayres’ Sensory Integration are used on a daily basis to inform parents/carers, education staff and children in managing participation challenges.

Mandy was one of the founding members of the original Sensory Integration Study Group on Perception in the UK, which later amalgamated with others to become the Sensory Integration Network UK and Ireland.  She served for many years representing Scotland on the committee and latterly on the Board of Directors as Vice Chair. 

Mandy is an experienced lecturer in assessment and interpretation of the Sensory Integration and Praxis Tests (SIPT) and related assessments. She has an interest and expertise in a range of neurodevelopmental disabilities of childhood, including Developmental Coordination Disorder/Dyspraxia, ASD, and differences in integrating sensory information in the preterm survivor and children and young people with autism spectrum disorder is evident.

Mandy’s leadership role in the community of practitioners is acknowledged by her medical, academic and international colleagues allowing her to make substantial contributions to ASI research, advocacy, education and practice.  Mandy was a Research Practitioner for 8 years working as a member of the CIRCLE Collaboration at Queen Margaret University (QMU) Edinburgh, in a transdisciplinary team researching into collaborative practice between health and education, which resulted in a range of publications and materials to support therapists and education staff. 

Mandy continues to be involved in many projects including research priorities for learning difficulties for children and young people, an RCT on the impact of intervention related to SI for children with autism in mentoring and supervisory roles and the Evaluation in Ayres Sensory Integration(EASI) reliability and validity data collection.