Strengths-Based Programming in Occupational Therapy

 In this episode of "Animals & Aquatics," host Gina wraps up Occupational Therapy Month with reflections on the month's journey and plans for what's next. She delves into strengths-based programming, exploring its impact on both clients and teams, while sharing strategies for effective therapy. Gina also discusses the transition from winter to spring and the preparations for summer programming. Listen in for insights on maximizing client success, balancing team strengths, and navigating upcoming challenges. 

Transcript

Microphone (3- Logitech USB Headset) 0:04

Hi, thanks for being with me today. We are here to wrap up occupational therapy month. And boy, has it been a month? I don't know about you, but I am tired at the end of this month. And I'm excited to start looking forward to may and what is coming up next? Let's get started. Hi, welcome to animals and aquatics I'm Gina, your host. I'm glad you're here with us today. We have been celebrating occupational therapy all month, and we've been traveling with our best friend, the occupational therapy practice framework, otherwise known as the OT P F as I like to say, it's an occupational therapy education in short format, and I found it so helpful in a variety of ways. From evaluations to interventions, to designing field work programs and helping guide my documentation. There are so many applications for the OTPF and I hope you've enjoyed the journey along with me. Now that we are coming to the end of occupational therapy month and coming to the end of April. I feel like it's a really good time to reflect on the conclusion of winter and to really start thinking about spring. And what's coming next. I know that we're starting to prepare a lot of our summer programming and getting our clients enrolled for summer sessions that are going to start. The last week in June, we are going to take a week off right before the end of June and go camping for a week. So that's going to be our little and of the spring and kicking off summer vacation. And right now, really, for me as a professor in an OTA program, this is a busy season in school. We have three to four weeks left, three weeks of classes. And one week for finals. And so there's really a lot as we condense into the end of the year. And start to focus on finals right. Getting ready for finals. And Being an academia. That means that there's a lot of preparatory work going on for me and I think that's contributing to this. end of April just. A little bit of a little not a let down. But an ending here. As we finish celebrating occupational therapy month and all the business from conferences in March, then going right into April's occupational therapy month and. Into like wrapping up the semester. So that's where we're at right now. And we're really starting to look at what do we need to do to be ready for summer. What do we need to do to make sure we have everything that we want to run smoothly throughout the summer prepared. And if you have been listening for a while, or if you know a little bit about me, Then you know that I run two online programs. One is a clinical mentorship and the other one is a business bootcamp called business barn raising. And that's coming up in June. So I'm also preparing for that as well. So there's a number of different things going on. As we wrap up occupational therapy month. One of the things I'd like to touch on is strengths-based programming. And I'd like to talk about that both from the client side. As well as from the team side. So let's start with the client side. Now, strengths based therapy has definitely gained a lot of momentum. And it is a change from when we typically look at more deficit based programming and I think. A lot of us were taught or have that understanding and comfort area in looking at where the client's weak areas are and looking at building those areas up. But when we look at strengths based programming, It's important to look at areas that they already have strong skills where they are functioning well, and that might be if we're working in pediatrics- at age level. Same as peers. If we're talking about mental health, that might be an area where they have more confidence where they're still functioning well in their life. That could be ADL's IADL's it could be education or work, right. It could be a variety of different areas that they might be doing really well in. And we want to take note of these again, it's often. Easier for us sometimes to look at the areas that someone is struggling and saying, okay, these are the areas that you're struggling. These are the areas that you want to improve. But strengths-based programming. If we get really to the heart of strengths-based therapy approach, it's looking at where are they doing well, how can we expand that? So that way they have more life satisfaction. They have more joy in their lives. They have more things to look forward to. And whether we're talking about children, whether we're talking about adults or even older adults, having more happiness, joy and things to look forward to in our lives is something that would benefit all of us. And when we can focus on the things that we do, well, the things that are going right. The things that are important and meaningful to us, then we can come at that from that strengths-based approach. And. Often, when we think about the strengths-based approach, we think of using the strengths to improve the weaknesses. And I like to think about this from a sensory context, because the sensory integration frame of reference is often a place that I go. And if I'm looking at a sensory profile, I might look and see where they have some strengths. And if that's in vision, because a lot of clients rate will have strengths in vision. Then I know that I can count on that visual sense to bring along the other areas that they're struggling in. So I can introduce a new activity or concept visually where they're going to be really strong and then we can practice it by integrating the other senses, maybe like auditory. So bringing in then auditory directions. After they're able to follow a visual prompt, or I can put some multisensory input into it and I have a movement component to it, as well as the visual component. And when I think about strengths-based therapy, that's often the way. That comes to mind first, right. Is to take the area that they have a strengthen and use it to bring along the areas that they're struggling in. But we can take a deeper approach to strengths-based programming and really focus on expanding the areas that they have strength in. And sometimes this feels really counter-intuitive. Our brain wants to say"yeah. But what about the areas that they're struggling in?: Those are the areas that I've been taught to provide intervention in. Those are the areas maybe that a parent is really concerned about. That their fine motor skills aren't as strong as their gross motor skills and their social skills. And we can think about, we can spend a lot of time working on their fine motor skills, certainly and we can make some improvements in their fine motor skills after all those OTs. Right. That's an area that we're known for. But we can also take time to celebrate their strong, gross motor and social skills. And through that, we may also improve some of the fine motor skills through some of the activities that this client made you with peers. If we're looking at those social skills or ways to strengthen the arm, hand and shoulder through those gross motor activities. And we know that that can have an impact on those fine motor skills too. And we're really taking things that the client is motivated to do. So that MOHO approach. They are excited and passionate about and when we think about a caregiver or a parent bringing their child to a therapy session, we can think about how exciting it is for them to bring their child when the child is excited. And they're asking like, oh, is it OT? Is. OT today. All right, this is this an OT day. And when the parent can answer. Yes. And the child's excited and they're motivated to go. That is tapping into that strengths based approach. when we think about it from a therapy perspective, hopefully that can make a little bit of sense to you. And I'm curious to know if you are using. Truly as strengths-based approach. If it's something maybe you've just heard of, but aren't sure how to implement. Or if you're using the client's strengths to bring along more of the areas that they have a weakness in. So I'm curious about that because we've certainly been expanding our understanding and growth in that strengths-based approach. Now for our teams. This is something that in our clinical mentorship, we've really been doing a deep dive in because no matter where you are. In a niche practice, whether that's hippotherapy aquatics animal assisted therapy, nature-based therapy, this is not. Me. The client and the clinic. It doesn't work that way. We have other people on our teams and we need to look at how do we meet their needs. And a lot of times the other people on our teams, our volunteers. And that brings a whole nother aspect to it. Now we have paid team members, right? That may be a paid horse handler. It may be a paid swim instructor or deck hand in the aquatic environment, it may be a dog handler. Who is coming with their therapy dog. And so that's a team. That they're coming, that you're paying them to come to your therapy session. Or all of these positions may also be volunteer. We also have fieldwork students that we often interact with and right. They're coming to work with us as well and to learn from us. To think about what strengths they're coming to us with is important. Why are they volunteering? Why do they want this job? Why are they working with us? What do they hope to get out of it? And when we start to take that approach, we can find out what they really love about what they're doing. What are their top two or three things that they do when they're with us? And we can look to prioritize those types of activities for them to help increase their satisfaction, to give them more education, mentoring opportunities. In those areas that they get a lot of enjoyment out of and we can converse. Really ask about some of the areas that they don't enjoy as much. And we can see if we can find alternatives in those areas. In some cases, this may seem like, oh, of course, they're gonna get to do all the stuff that they want to do and then someone else has to pick up the stuff that they don't want to do. Great. How is that going to work out? And. It's always interesting. When we come at strengths from this angle, because there's an assumption that what one person likes to do or what you like to do, or what you find most meaningful is also going to be what your other team members find most meaningful. And in fact, the best teams are composed of people who find different things valuable or find different things meaningful, or have strengths in different areas. If all of your team members have a lot of strengths in horse skills, but they don't have a lot of strengths in people skills. That's not a very well-rounded team. And so you'll have all of whether that's your volunteers or your therapy staff that are all grouping towards doing the same types of activities. And leaving weaknesses or skilled gaps in your team. So especially when we start to look at a team approach, we're really looking at fitting different pieces together, knowing that all of these different pieces are not the same shape, meaning that they don't have strengths in the same area. And when we can get ones that fit well together, then we can find people who have, strong horse or animal skills, people that have strong people skills. So they can do a really great job interacting with families that we're working with or with our clients. We can have people who have really good detail oriented skills. So they might be helping us with our scheduling double-checking checking clients in, they might be more of a front end. Staff desk, administrator type of person. And as we compose that team together, we're looking at. Where do we have a skills gap? And do we need to hire for that skills gap? Can we ask our current team members to see if anyone enjoys that area or would like to learn more about that area. So they might be able to fill in a skills gap that way. Rather than just assuming that, well, this has to get done and I'm going to have to do it. Even though it's something I lo I don't really like it. I'm not very good at it. Or. We have two. Assign one of our other team members to do it. And they don't like doing it either. Right. They're not going to be very good at it. And we can really see where this hurts practices when this is their front end person, or this is their face of their therapy business. Because one of the main complaints I see from families locally is from like a pediatrician's office, right? Is when the front end, the front desk people are. Not happy. They're not pleasant. They're hard to deal with. They make mistakes in scheduling appointments. Those types of things are really difficult for clients or families. To manage over and over again. Finding someone who has that skillset is really important and something. That they love to do, right. They love to interact with the clients. They always have a smile on their face. They're diligent about. Checking the schedule, a day or two ahead of time and reaching out to people who may be haven't scheduled in a while. People who love that type of work are going to be your best face or your front end people. There's again, those, the other people who they just want to be with the horses, the animals, they want to be like the behind the scenes, people, those people are great for getting things done at your facility. They're more than happy to work in the barn or to take care of the animals, to do those types of activities. Don't put them in the front end. They're not going to be happy there. So when we look at teams and managing volunteers, this is a great approach to learn more about. And to really start to put into practice, we go over some nice tools. That help assess what are team members enjoy and what they're good at. And then we look at where we have skills gaps, and we look at different creative ways to fill those. So if that's something also that you've been doing, I would love to hear about it. You can always send me a message or send me a DM and let me know if this is something that you've been doing or something that you feel like you really could grow more in. Because again, no matter which niche area we're in. We are working in a team and we need to have team members that understand what our strengths are and really play to our strengths. And we need to understand what their strengths are and. That will contribute to their overall happiness and enjoyment of working with us. And that's especially important in our settings because it does take awhile to provide training to new team members or volunteers. And we want to keep them with us. We want to keep them happily with us. For as long as we can. So when we think about. Incorporating a strength space approach, whether that's with clients or whether that's with our team members, we want to first find a way to assess or evaluate what their strengths are. And we can look at. What strengths are through a couple of different ways. So what are they good at? Where's their performance. Good. What do they enjoy? What do they look forward to doing before? Doing it. What do they enjoy doing it while they're doing it? They achieve a state of flow. And what do they reflect positively on? Particularly if we can find out what they reflect positively on that's happened weeks or months ago, it left a lasting impression. And then once we find out what someone's strengths are. Then we want to find ways to make sure that they can do more of what they're strong at. We can see the greatest areas of growth. In building up strengths, giving training for our volunteers or our team members in areas that they're excited and passionate about. And we can help our clients grow in other areas as well as find more joy and satisfaction in their lives by bolstering areas of strength for them. Those are the areas that they're going to go on and look for recreational activities or employment activities in their future. If we can really help them understand. Where their strengths are play to their strengths and help direct them in those ways that is going to have a long lasting and meaningful effect for them. So as we wrap up occupational therapy month, And reflect on different ways to integrate. Frameworks formats and ways to help us in our practice. Especially, as we communicate outside of the OT world, we communicate outside of our niche with animals or in aquatics. We want to find ways to really make that easy for us. It makes us stand out so that we can talk about the things that we do. And the things that we do well is really an important aspect of our practice and the occupational therapy practice framework is a great tool for that. You can certainly go back and listen to our April is occupational therapy month episodes for that. If you are excited about what hearing what's coming next. We're going to be taking a look into some of the aspects of. Really the nuts and bolts of what's going on in getting started. Now, remember at the beginning we had our getting started series and those were things to consider. Now we're going to talk a little bit more of that operational kind of tools that you can use, things that you can do. We're going to have some guest speakers come on for our next month to introduce you to some of the things that they're doing, and hopefully there'll be helpful and insightful for you as well. So I'm looking for, to may and I'm looking for, to the end of the semester, and I'm looking forward to summer. Thanks for listening today. If you haven't already, please go ahead and subscribe to the podcasts that way you'll get our next episode coming out. And if you could take a moment and leave a review for us, that would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.