Non-traditional OT roles…

Hi! I am an occupational therapist in a ”mobile” outpatient clinic! I have actually been considering starting a weekly blog just to share a bit more information about it, as I feel like there are a lot of benefits in comparison to traditional outpatient.

I have been working for DWP in a pilot project at a job centre plus. I have so enjoyed working in this non traditional role. My role is to work in partnership with work coaches who work directly with people (claimants on Universal Credit) who have long term mental or physical health conditions that prevent them from working. My role has been to equally support the work coaches and the claimants. I have assisted with the identification of the mental or physical health condition and to support with signposting, initial advice and referrals to primary, secondary or tertiary care. The pilot has been in different areas across the UK and finishes in January. The feedback from work coaches and claimants has been very positive I believe. Work coaches have explained that they are not always confident to explore someone's health condition with them. Nor are they always confident to recommend potential services or interventions which could assist. Therefore, having an occupational therapist on hand to discuss cases has been vital in having these discussions. The fit for an occupational therapist in this setting has been amazing. We have discussed all aspect of daily life, based on Maslow's hierarchy of needs. It makes sense that if a person's basic needs such as food and shelter is in flux and insecure then the next stage of getting a job is so much harder. I have found that there have not always been easy answers (services are so stretched, particularly in mental health). However, for both the claimant and the work coach, having a occupational therapist there who has the ability to reflectively and empathically listen, combined with knowing the impact on daily life of mental and physical health conditions, can make a huge difference.

Hi, I work with a live in care provider, who provide 24/7 live in care in clients home. I was employed 2 years ago as an Occupational Therapist to develop specialist OT service within the group. My main roles are to work with our clients, carers and care managers to ensure safe moving and handling practices, reduce the risk of falls and support safer and quicker hospital discharges for our clients.

The company are a national company covering England and Scotland so my role involves a lot of travelling as I visit client's homes around the country. Having worked for 25 + years in the NHS, it is great to be back working face to face with client's providing holistic client centered care and enableling our carers to provide the best care possible.

I worked in Seattle with Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion supporting clients who were experiencing homelessness. There's another OT whose in the role now and it required lots of outreach and liaising with case managers, temporary housing and using harm reduction principles!

I have just started a new role as a High Intensity Service User worker. I think there is only one other OT in the these new roles in the UK. Having been working generically in mental health for the last three years I am excited to now have a job where I believe I can use my OT skills.

These roles are being rolled out through the UK, working with those who present frequently at A and E and helping them find solutions to the underlying issues that have perpetuated that behaviour. These could be anything from combating loneliness, reengaging in interests and valued roles, overcoming social and environmental barriers and challenging professionals and services to communicate better!

It allows for working very creatively and holistically.

@Tessa Dias it sounds like you had a similar placement experience to @carrie.sant. Perhaps you two could share stories?

My final practice placement was role-emerging with a Fire and Rescue Service. This was a brilliant placement and unique to the Service. I worked alongside the Community Safety Teams who carried out Health and Wellbeing Checks (HSCs) as part of their role in educating householders on fire safety. My role enabled me to use the positive branding of the Fire Service to access vulnerable people who, for whatever reason, did not want to engage with health and social care professionals, but they were happy to engage with me. I supported the service-users with a range of interventions and was not restricted by institutional conventions, educated my Firefighter colleagues to understand functional difficulties that the service-users experience and collaborated to identify feasible solutions to reduce the service-user's risk of fire or harm from fire. I also helped to develop some evidence-based standards of operating procedures relating to the aids that the Firefighters issued (commissioned by the NHS). I know that some Fire and Rescue Services have linked in with traditional OT services but the service I was able to offer reached those who were not known to health and social care services, and more importantly, contributed to the 'prevention; agenda' in an innovative way. It is a shame that funding for more non-traditional roles is scarce as such roles, from my own experiences and those shared here, shows the immense contributions these roles can make.

My setting is unique not necessarily my role. I have a mobile sensory clinic. I travel around to rural schools and clients homes and use my bus equipped with swings, Lycra hammocks, tunnels, balls, trapeze bars, etc to work on the child’s occupations. Clients don’t have to travel to get to their appointment and the bus has everything in it to help them meet the goals.

Thanks for starting this Forum discussion @Jacqueline Webb! We'll bring this to the attention of Hub Members this week. On this topic you have raised, it would also be worth visitors/Members taking a look at this article from The Guardian in the UK: www.theguardian.com/social-care-network/social-life-blog/2016/feb/03/occupational-therapy-ot-student-nhs

I started my career as wheelchair therapist in the NHS but soon moved into the third sector working as an occupational therapist specialising in assistive technology for people with sight loss. After two fantastic years in this role where I had the opportunity to set up and develop a new service within the organisation, which helped hundreds of people to find the right technology to enable them to be more independent, I am now working for another charity supporting adults with learning disabilities, autism and ABI. This is a brand new role to the organisation and is fairly innovative in the sector. I am still in the early days but am incredibly lucky to be part of the organisations strategy to increase their use of assistive technology across all of their services and excited for what is to come :)