Meet our staff...

Lisa, Rosie and Deanna are three Occupational Therapy students from Leeds Metropolitan University, working with Integrated Services. During their three month placement, they have been undertaking a project, which they explain below.

We are a group of three students studying Occupational Therapy at Leeds Metropolitan University, currently on a role emerging placement with Integrated Services until the 11th July. 

For role emerging placements, students enter into a non-traditional placement setting and introduce or expand the role of occupational therapy within the service and develop a project around this. Occupational therapists (OTs) enable people to overcome obstacles which prevent them from participating in the occupations that matter to them. This may be a result of the aging process, illness, disability or other circumstances.

Our project is to promote occupational therapy to the other professionals working within Integrated Services in Beeston (where we are mainly based) who are predominantly District Nurses and Community Matrons.

During the beginning stages of the placement we gathered information to help us devise our project by shadowing nurses and OTs on client visits, conducting a focus group with OTs and surveying the nurses based at Beeston. Our rationale for the project was that most OT referrals are for equipment or adaptation provision and the OTs in Integrated Services are aiming to work more holistically. This includes enabling clients to engage in occupations that are important to them, such as being able to socialise with friends at a weekly coffee morning, being able to take their dog for a walk, or knitting a scarf for a grandchild.

As part of the project, we have created several posters which will be displayed at Beeston Health Centre, as well as leaflets which will be distributed to staff and patients, explaining the role of Occupational Therapy. During the last week of our placement, we are holding an interactive session with the nurses based at Beeston to explore the meaning of occupation and how beneficial engaging in meaningful occupations is to a person’s health and wellbeing. We will then discuss potential interventions OTs can provide, using case studies to illustrate the role of OT with several different clients.  

Our placement mentors believe there is an unmet need where occupational therapy could improve clients overall health and wellbeing (e.g. clients experiencing social isolation, disruption in roles and routines) however due to the perception of OT within the service these clients are not getting referred. Integrated working requires professionals to understand one another’s roles so we believe promoting OT to other professionals will serve this purpose while also addressing the unmet need of clients. We hope that when the placement is finished our mentors will continue to use the resources we have produced to promote OT across Leeds. 

Lisa Downing,  Rosie Longshaw and Deanna Stephens