Purposeful and Meaningful

Kate Sheehan

Director, The OT Service

The OT Service provides high quality advice, consultancy and training to manufacturers, retailers and service providers. It also provides occupational therapy clinical services in housing and equipment to case managers, solicitors and private individuals via its handpicked network of occupational therapists.

For more info email kate@theotservice.co.uk

Iwas recently away with friends, some of whom I have known for 40 years. We always go away for a late new year weekend and spend the time chatting, visiting museums, art galleries and lots of restaurants, cafes, and tea shops. It is our first one for two years and it certainly improved my mental health enormously. Virtual meet-ups are never quite as good. This year we went to Norwich, and I went into a quilt exhibition. The first exhibit was a bedcover made by a group of female patients in a psychiatric hospital in 1961 as a wedding gift to their occupational therapist. The note next to it stated: “The OT department was set up in 1959 to provide opportunities for women to leave the ward and have the chance to socialise and practice traditional hand skills like weaving, basket making, knitting, and plain sewing of domestic textiles. The therapy aimed to introduce life outside the institution, particularly for women who had been in the hospital for many years. It was used as a possible step towards living more independently and to create a space in which to socialise.” It really made me think about our profession; this was sixty years ago when large psychiatric hospitals were the norm and a significant number of women were incarcerated for years for such things as, being pregnant out of wedlock, for being a “bit nervy”, or for having a learning difficulty. What really struck me was the importance of meaning in the activity they were engaging in; how social contact is so important to us as human beings and that having a group of people you can chat with was as vital for our mental health then as it is today, and that the purpose of the activity, sewing, can bring you together in a group to create something of value and meaning. Do we think about what has meaning and purpose to our clients? Do we really listen and talk to them about what is important to them and adds value to their life, or do we have our “therapist” goals, which are neither meaningful nor purposeful to them? For example, on visiting a new client my referrer instruction was to “support the client in her discharge home from hospital as soon as possible, she will need a wet room, ramps to the front door and widening of the kitchen door”. On discussing what my client’s goals were, she stated that they were being able to feed her rescue chickens, to garden and to still be able to cook. These were the things that she loved to do. Although discharge was part of this process, together we needed to make sure that the things that had meaning to her were achieved at the same time. Returning to the quilt I came across in the museum, I was intrigued by the subject matter on the individual squares, many of them being activities that are still important to many of us today. The pandemic has shown us the importance of activities, such as gardening, painting, music or just having a cup of tea with a friend, we must never lose sight within our profession that often the activities that add value to an individual are not the therapist goals, but should be taking priority in a profession that is clientcentred.

PURPOSEFUL AND MEANINGFUL