Employment, disability, health and wellbeing

I’m Georgia, I’m a disabled occupational therapist who has cerebral palsy. I was so excited to qualify in 2021 and couldn’t wait to enter the working world of occupational therapy. Yet, this wasn’t as easy as it seemed and landing my first role took me quite a while, impacting my self-worth and mental health. 

This year’s theme for Disability History Month is disability, health and wellbeing. As occupational therapists, we know that a big factor that influences health and wellbeing is one's role in society.

Yet finding a job with a disability can be a minefield with disability unemployment rates being a lot higher in comparison to non-disabled people. Knowing this information alone can be hard-hitting, never mind trying to find a job. Finding a job can be a mentally exhausting experience for disabled people and certainly was for me in 2021. 

When I finally landed my first role post-graduation I landed on a non-traditional role at the University of Huddersfield and my official title was Clinical Demonstrator. Now, I am a Graduate Teaching Assistant in the same team – this is a varied job meaning that I get to help out with some modules and get to participate in project work. What I’m looking forward to the most about this role is promoting the profession by helping to recruit future occupational therapy students.

Quite a non-traditional route for a newly qualified occupational therapist, right? Certainly not the route I envisioned post-graduation. I love my job, everything happens for a reason and I’m so glad things turned out the way they have. But why is this seen as non-traditional? 

If you would have said to me a year ago that I'd be doing what I’m doing now, I wouldn’t have believed you and I would have thought I don’t have the knowledge, skills or experience to even apply for the job. I was lacking in confidence and had huge imposter syndromes when thinking about applying for a ‘typical' Band 5 occupational therapy role never mind anything else. Yet, why does this matter? I understand why a Band 5 rotation is the most popular route once qualifying and I am fully aware that I am lacking in some clinical skills, however, my line manager and I have explored ways to evidence this. 

When I tell other occupational therapists about my role I do often get asked what made me go straight into this role post-qualifying and if I feel like I am missing out on gaining clinical skills. I never know how to answer this question and this is because of two reasons. The first reason was that with it being six months after qualifying when I accepted the first post I was just so eager to be an occupational therapist that I wanted to explore any opportunity that was appropriate for my access needs. The second reason was that I realised I was never actually going to go into a band 5 rotation. It has taken me a while to acknowledge this, and it was a previous lecturer that said this and made me realise that this is always where I am meant to be.

I do acknowledge that I’m going to need some clinical experience to progress further in this profession. However, if I am working as an occupational therapist then I am in an occupational therapy role.

I am in my early twenties and I have my whole career in the profession ahead of me therefore I have plenty of time to get any additional experiences to enhance my personal and professional development. As we all know learning is lifelong and right now the most important thing is that I am working as an occupational therapist, learning and gaining new experiences.

So, do I ever question going into a ‘non-traditional' newly qualified occupational therapy post? Yes, I do of course I do, but in a good way as I know I am going to get so much out of this role which will ultimately benefit my future journey within this profession and I am so glad that I went for this opportunity.

This Disability History Month I want to recognise my privileges to have found a job that works well with my disability, health and wellbeing and to be in such a supportive team. So many disabled people long for that, yes, some disabled people can’t work due to health but there are a lot of disabled people that want to work but are tired of facing inaccessible barriers over and over again. As occupational therapists we must act as allies and challenge these ableist systems as if more people from the disabled community are let into the working world a lot of learning can be done.

Georgia is a Founding Member of AbleOTUK. You can follow Georgia and AbleOTUK online at:

Twitter – @GeorgiaVineOT/@AbleOTUK

Instagram – @NotSoTerriblePalsy/@AbleOTs