Developing Occupation-Centered Programs for the Community: A Workbook for Students and Professionals - Softcover

Linda S. Fazio, Ph.D., OTR, FAOTA

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0130833320 ISBN 13: 9780130833327

Publisher: Pearson, 2000

Synopsis

Univ. of Southern California, Los Angeles. Textbook, for students and therapists, presents practical information on everything from assessing community needs, to setting up a practice, to writing a business plan, to marketing a new program. Features learning objectives, key terms, exercises, summaries, and references. Softcover.

About this title

From the Back Cover

FEATURES:

• Introduces a wide variety of exercises to aid readers in applying concepts and developing new programming.
• Presents transregional and cross-cultural examples of successful, effective programming to demonstrate occupational programming at work in the community.
• Discusses the skills readers need to be successful in community practice, such an communication, negotiation and advocacy, management, and ethics.
• Provides a practical approach for determining community needs and how to balance them with the programmer's skills and resources.
• Guides readers through the process of writing program goals and objectives and developing individualized client goals and objectives.

From the Inside Flap

Preface

Developing Occupation-Centered Programs for the Community: A Workbook for Students and Professionals is a practical guide to mark the way for the return of occupational therapy to community practice. Some practitioners, of course, have never left. Rather, they have remained at the center of their patients'/ clients' communities throughout their practice, and their models for intervention always have been inclusive of the context and dynamics of community.

For others who have aligned themselves with the medical/ institutional models for treatment—the models that in some cases may have created a dependent community of the ill and disabled—returning to community practice may be a reawakening or at least a reminder of the power of the human spirit to forge ahead and to be independent. We can inspire our communities through skill building and coaching via occupation. We can recognize the intricacy involved in the simplicity of meaning and help our clients to achieve it. We can guide those who embrace wellness and autonomy in achieving that status regardless of the presence of illness or differing abilities. We can advocate for a strong and optimistic future for our clients and for our profession. We can create and build positive communities as well as contribute to existing ones.

For the occupational therapy practitioner of one, five, or twenty-five years, the world of practice may have been enlightening, satisfying, disappointing, or all of these things, but it has seldom been without challenge. Practice today and in the future represents yet another challenge—or better, an opportunity. It represents a crossroads where we have many potential choices to make. We can learn the language of managed care, and we can hone our administrative, managerial, and political skills to become leaders as we advocate for ourselves as practitioners and for our patients/ clients as consumers within that more traditional environment. Although the path of managed care may be uncertain, some of us will and should choose that arena for the "good fight."

For others, though, who may not see their future taking the direction of managed care, the path to alternative or community-based practice is by no means any easier, although it can offer immeasurable personal rewards. Beyond the entry-level skills that must be exceptional to practice in the community, the practitioner must have creativity, ingenuity, and resourcefulness. In addition, he or she must have the accompanying commitment to the rights of everyone to have the opportunity, knowledge, and skills to lead a self-assessed and productive life with dignity and quality.

There has never been a time when our return to community as our context for practice is more appropriate or more needed. And for the student, it is a place to begin. As Margaret Mead has said:

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can
change the world. Indeed it's the only thing that ever has.
–Lecture, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (1973)

When I first heard these words during graduate school, they inspired me. Although I had "given up" on occupational therapy for a time, her words encouraged me to return—and to return with a vengeance. I knew that occupational therapy could change the world, even if for only one patient. Later I discovered that neither occupational therapy nor one patient could change the world. In fact, it was occuupation and the impact of occupation-centered interventions within the context of community that held this power to bring about change.

I have shared this belief with students for some time and have, with their help, devised ways to bridge their admission into community practice. It is time to write it down and to describe how to get started. It is my expectation that this book will guide you in the process of developing occupation-centered community programming. It will help you begin. The spirit and energy that is required to create change is up to you.

I am reminded of a story told by the potter Paul Soldner as he demonstrated his techniques during a student workshop in Colorado during the 1960s. As a student he had observed a photo of a clay pot in an artist's journal. He was enamored with the form and the stature of the pot and tried for years to raise a similar example from his potter's wheel. Finally successful, he raised the pot of his dreams, just like the photo, to a striking four feet in height. It was some time before he discovered that the pot in the photo, his dream for years, was only four inches high. This is what I would like you to do with my community programming examples—take them from four inches to four feet!

The glue that holds the world together is community—in place, in spirit, and in meaning. This new millennium is the time for us as occupation-centered practitioners to again return to the community.

Linda S. Fazio

Edition details

• Publisher: Pearson
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0130833320
• ISBN 13: 9780130833327
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 298