Age Safe® America is privileged to honor the work of Occupational Therapists and the AOTA. Over the years we have had the pleasure to work with many professionals serving in this inspiring field as an Approved Provider of continuing education with our Senior Home Safety Specialist® certification.
Empowering Everyday Living is the 2022 theme for Occupational Therapy Month and speaks strongly to the important work accomplished by OTs for their clients in all settings. Occupational therapists treat injured, ill, or disabled patients through the therapeutic use of everyday activities. They help these patients develop, recover, improve, as well as maintain the skills needed for daily living and working. OTs take the full picture of a client’s wellbeing and safety into account as they develop and implement strategies to facilitate tasks of daily living or living with challenges from disability, illness or injury.
Occupational therapists assist people to achieve their goals. They help identify the goals that will achieve the highest possible level of function to which a client may aspire. OTs focus on the client’s needs in a person-centered plan of action to maintain their independence or help re-build their independence.
The OT training facilitates the creation of customized environments to maximize the opportunity for people to do the activities that they want and need to do every day. This means, more simply, that OTs observe the client and their home setting combined with information about the challenges that a person is facing. They create the solutions- sometimes with products and items in the home already, sometimes with additional products or using existing products in a new and innovative way. The desire to empower the client to live as full a life as possible with greater sense of control and independence is engrained in the OT through their education and mission. The focus on safety in the home parallels the focus of Age Safe America which is advancing successful aging at home.
