A O TJ
The real-world impact of models and theory Associate Professor Stephen Isbel, Editorial Board Member, Australian Occupational Therapy Journal
“Without theory, practitioners are akin to technicians. Without practice, theory has no grounding in the world. Combining the two is crucial to occupational therapy.” (Turpin and Garcia, 2021, p.213) In this short piece, two examples are highlighted showing how theory is being successfully used to guide occupational therapy practice. In the first example Dr Robert Pereira is interviewed and describes the CORE approach (Pereira et al., 2020) and how he uses it to guide his everyday practice. Dr Pereira is an occupational therapist who works in a public mental health service part time and his own private practice part time. In the second example Katie Cole is interviewed and explains The Intentional Relationship (Taylor, 2020) in occupational therapy. Katie has successfully embedded key aspects of The Intentional Relationship with occupational therapists in a large public health service.
10 otaus.com.au
1. The CORE approach: Dr Robert Pereira Stephen: “What is the CORE approach?” Robert: “The CORE approach is basically a way of doing your practice through an inclusive lens. It uses the ideas of Capabilities, Opportunities, Resources and Environment to help people engage in life and ultimately be included in society in meaningful and productive ways. It is a way of practising that is inclusive of including peoples’ goals and aspirations and importantly of their values.” Stephen: “What are some of the key ideas that underpin the CORE approach?” Robert: “The capabilities approach underpins some of the key assumptions of the CORE approach. The capabilities approach assumes that allows people the opportunity to engage in life by looking at their capabilities is a powerful way of creating meaningful change. Combine that with looking at how
environments can influence behaviour gives us a really nice way of organising our occupational therapy practice.” Stephen: “How do you use the CORE approach in your everyday practice?” Robert: “The CORE approach is a way of doing practice that is all about authenticity, all about enabling people to achieve authentic occupational outcomes and I use it all the time in the mental health setting I work in.” Stephen: “Can you give me an example of how you use the CORE approach?” Robert: “I had a client with a mental health condition and other co-morbidities during the first COVID lockdown. He really wanted to be able to engage socially with his family and friends and continue the pre-vocational work I had been doing with him prior to the lockdown. The CORE approach helped me identify the key capabilities he brought to the table, and to frame some of the opportunities I saw he could engage in based upon those capabilities. Then we used some of the resources we had available in the form of an NDIS plan to purchase some assistive technology that allowed
