Thomas Williams – an occupational therapist with Swansea Bay University Health Board – will be part of the panel for What will Occupational therapy look like in 2035? at our Annual Conference.
Thomas has reflected on his role on the panel, the future of occupational therapy and what he hopes to explore.
Our huge thanks to Thomas for sharing his thoughts ahead of #RCOT2024.
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I was delighted to be invited to take part in one of the plenaries at this year’s Annual Conference – #RCOT2024.
The theme of the plenary is What will occupational therapy look like in 2035?
Now, there has been a lot of change at RCOT over the past three years and it feels like an exciting time to be starting a career in occupational therapy.
However, being newly qualified (October 2023) and having relatively little experience of clinical practice, I initially thought, 'how am I going to contribute meaningfully to this conversation?'.
After some thinking though, being at the start of my career also gives me a fresh insight on where I want OT to be in 10 years’ time and I am excited to share my thoughts during the plenary session.
The aspects that I hope I get to talk about include embedding Equity, Diversity and Belonging (EDB) into the OT process, OTs championing preventative care and OTs being empowered to work within communities that they connect with personally.
Embedding Equity, Diversity and Belonging into the OT Process
I could talk about Equity, Diversity and Belonging all day, and my hope for our profession in 2035 is for EDB to permeate all that we do as OTs.
I want to see OTs speaking confidently about how diversity is celebrated within their teams and that the cultural needs of all of their clients are routinely explored and supported.
I would love for OT assessments to seamlessly capture information about an individual’s intersectionality to make it even easier for us to work as person-centred practitioners.
OT education needs to embed EDB concepts into its case studies and training so that OT students start thinking about EDB and how it affects their practice from their pre-registration training, all the way through to postgraduate, post-registration studies.
I think OTs are so good at getting to know an individual and what is important to them that it’s easy to forget that EDB can and should be something that we talk about explicitly. Some OTs I have met recently have queried the difference between 'equality' and 'equity', for example, and I feel this is an essential concept for OTs to understand.
The RCOT EDB Strategy and action plan has paved the way, and I am excited to see how EDB grows at RCOT and more widely into our profession.
OTs championing preventative care
I have a recollection of reading about preventative care approaches when completing my pre-registration studies, and it made so much sense to me to provide care and treatment to people before they reach a crisis point, rather than letting things get ‘bad enough to need input’.
The RCOT Workforce Strategy emphasises the positive impact OTs can have working in a preventative, community-led way.
The Welsh Government also promotes a preventative health care system, though as one colleague said to me the other day – 'there’s still a long way to go on the preventative work.'
OTs have all the skills needed to prevent ill health and poor wellbeing, and we have the opportunity to really champion the value of occupation in promoting recovery and positive wellbeing. I think a shift in policy and focus on preventative care would need to happen to make this day-to-day practice, but I am not sure how this shift will happen.
However, one essential part of the preventative approach is closely linked with my final point of working within communities.
OTs being empowered to work within communities they connect with personally
Anyone who knows me well enough knows that I would love to develop OT services specifically for LGBTQIA+ people, which have higher incidences of mental health challenges than their cisgender and heterosexual peers.
The preventative and ‘within community’ ideas are so important for this idea, because mainstream services don’t always offer what individuals need. I imagine this is true of other minority groups or groups where a shared culture has a big impact on what a person-centred service looks like.
Who better to work with people and deliver person-centered care than an OT who shares in that culture, or at the very least, has made efforts to understand it and is able to intervene before niggles become crises?
Again, practically, I am not sure how (or if) an en masse move to primarily community working will be supported (but this harkens back to my initial thought of my lack of clinical experience) and I’m sure the plenary will touch on this and lots of other important and exciting developments for the next 10 years of OT.
I’m looking forward to hearing the other panellists’ views on the future of OT in the UK, as well as hearing questions from the audience.
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If you'd like to hear more from Thomas or see what the rest of the panel has to say please join us at #RCOT2024. Get your ticket and six months of access via our Annual Conference pages.