The Role of ADMs in OTA Membership’s Community Development

Miriam Hobson, OTA Manager SA/NT

Akey part of the OTA membership community calendar is the hosting of Annual Divisional Meetings (ADMs). The meetings hold a valuable space for drawing focus on the community development element of the association’s purpose, pursuits, and direction in leading the profession of occupational therapy in Australia. The sustainability of an association such as OTA is founded upon the belief of members that “while there may be many channels and tools that provide information and data about a field, the warrant for this ‘professional expertise’ is not provided by technology (e.g. Google); rather it stems from the professional community–the professional association (Sanders 2016, McKinley Advisors (2016)”.

Member hosting, presentation, and feedback garnered through ADMs is instrumental in the pursuit of our shared “relatively permanent affiliation, an identity, personal commitment, specific interests and general loyalties (Freidson and Lorber, 1972; Larson, 1977; Abbott, 2014)”. Given their pivotal role, let’s take a minute to look behind the scenes at how ADMs are structured to ensure they offer opportunities for occupational therapists to contribute to our community engagement.

The objectives of hosting ADMs include several short-term targets as well as longer-term implications. Specifically, the localised nature of holding ADMs in each of the states and territories provides: