Hi There,
My name is Kristina Marchiori, I am a new graduate OT in Toronto, Canada. I am currently not very busy with clients due to the nature of my pediatric practice in this time of COVID. However, I have chosen to start a conversation within our Canadian Association of Occupational Therapy via twitter about the lack of diversity in our profession and the education around our profession, in response to the protests and call to action that have been amplified in the past week. I am a white, queer identifying female, raised in a middle class family and recognize that this adds to my privilege as an individual who was able to be accepted and afford completing a Masters degree. I wanted to use my voice to help amplify the voice of the Black community and get a conversation going.
I am sharing this link below written by Lauren, who is an OT reflecting on her experience as one of two Black people in her office.
Please read the article and feel free to reflect in the comments. In the meantime, also I am interested in a couple questions if you don't mind answering
Where are you from (Country is fine, just curious about difference outside of Canadian profession)
How many non white OTs do you work with
How many Black OTs do you work with
In your OT degree, how many students of colour (non white) were in your class
In your OT degree, how many teachers or guest speakerss of colour (non white) did you encounter
in your OT degree, how many Black teachers or guests speakers did you encounter
In your OT degree, did you learn about the lived experience of different cultures and how you as an OT could adjust your practice to be accessible/supportive of all? (this DOES NOT include your own research, previous education or self started learning)
I'm not too sure where I want to go with this information (I don't really have funding or anything to start a large project) but I would like to get the conversation going so we can work on becoming a more diverse and accepting professional body for all of our clients and colleagues
Thanks for getting this really important discussion going @Kristina! Some have challenged me when I've promoted this cause, asking why we're not addressing the injustices faced by other 'minority' groups (N.B. I'm mindful that black people are not a minority globally). Clearly there's plenty more to do to balance the inequalities of our world. But I agree with those who feel now is an important a time as ever to try and unpick the decades of racism faced by the black community. To answer your questions:
I'm in the UK; trained in Bristol (south western city, quite multicultural)
I work with one non-white occupational therapist (see point 3)
I currently work with one black occupational therapist
There were 2 students of colour (non-white) in my university cohort, none of them were from the black community
All my teachers/guest speakers at university were white
In my OT degree, I encountered no black teachers or guests speakers
In my OT degree, I did learn about the lived experience of different cultures. We did occasionally discuss how we could adjust practice to be more accessible/supportive, but I feel this could have got much more airtime than it did.
I've had some great discussions with my OT colleagues recently on how we could better support patients from diverse cultures and communities. I also recently came across a great (new) YouTuber, @Shoneia Jones, whom the Hub has shared content from in its Therapy Videos portal. Here's one of her most recent videos, on occupational injustice:
I'm keen to follow this forum and hope more light is shed, from around the world! Jamie