Occupational therapy plays a crucial role in supporting people to live a meaningful life and increase their independence with everyday activities.
What is occupational therapy?
Occupational therapy (OT) is a holistic, person-centred approach to helping individuals participate in activities of everyday life, where all aspects of someone’s life are taken into consideration, including their abilities, disabilities, work life, and interactions within the community.
What do occupational therapists do?
Occupational therapists are qualified with either a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree and are registered health professionals who help people overcome challenges or barriers in order to participate in activities they find meaningful, such as taking care of oneself and others, working, hobbies, social events, and more.
It first involves the OT developing a detailed understanding of a person and creating tailored interventions based on the individual’s interests, strengths, and goals. This means that interventions can look different for everyone.
Who benefits from occupational therapy?
Occupational therapy helps people with physical, sensory, social, psychological, or cognitive challenges. OTs work with individuals of all ages, offering advice and services that can cater from children to older individuals.
Occupational therapy at WISE
At WISE Employment, you can find occupational therapy playing a crucial role across three programs: NDIS at WISE, Occupational Rehabilitation, and WISE IDEA.
NDIS at WISE
At NDIS at WISE, our occupational therapists work with adults experiencing challenges with their mental health. Our OTs can assist individuals to identify interests and goals, manage daily routines at home, access their community, and modify daily tasks to make them easier.
Occupational therapy delivered through the NDIS at WISE program is flexible in order to meet individual needs. Our NDIS Mental Health occupational therapists specialise in areas such as:
- Mental health management
- Functional capacity assessments
- Comprehensive recommendations and reports
- Evidence-based cognitive, sensory and vocational assessments
When commencing with an OT at NDIS at WISE, individuals are guided through a number of assessments that help the team to best understand someone’s needs, challenges, barriers and strengths. This is then used as a guide to help participants achieve their NDIS goals.
Occupational therapy can be provided in the home, community, any WISE office, or via telehealth.
Find more information on NDIS at WISE.
Occupational Rehabilitation
Our WISE Occupational Rehabilitation services primarily work in the workers’ compensation arena to help return injured workers to work, medico-legal assessments, pre-employment assessments, and injury prevention. We have many disciplines of Allied Health in the team, including some OTs. One area that requires the expertise of an OT is Activity of Daily Living Assessments. Here, we assess how a client manages at home with tasks such as cooking, cleaning, preparing meals, and managing their gardens, to name a few. We also review areas such as how they mobilise in and outside their home, ability to get on and off surfaces such as chairs and their bed or navigate stairs. We would typically then recommend equipment if needed to increase their independence and safety, e.g., a grab rail for the bathroom. Services could also be recommended, such as home help for cleaning.
For more on Occupational Rehabilitation.
WISE IDEA
WISE IDEA (innovation, development, evaluation, application) is an initiative of WISE Employment and was designed to transform the lives of Australians living with mental health conditions through employment. WISE IDEA engages with people with mental health conditions to build skills for work; their support workers, families, and carers and other supporters to provide effective assistance; and employers to provide responsive workplaces.
WISE IDEA has a number of occupational therapists who work as mental health and employment specialists who are engaged in the research, development, and implementation of evidence-based vocational rehabilitation pilots and programs. These include cognitive remediation (Employ Your Mind), navigating the social and communication challenges of workplace interaction (Workplace Interaction), mental health-specific vocational assessment and workplace adjustments (Chance for All, in partnership with Brotherhood of St Laurence, ANZ, and GradWISE) and a First Nations health management and employment program.
Find out more on WISE IDEA.