Global centre for excellence in occupational therapy for parenting
The aim of OT4Parenting is to advance parenting as a core area of occupational therapy practice, education and research.
We believe that every parent matters.
Occupational therapy has great potential to assist parents to optimise their competence and well-being in parenting occupations.
Occupational therapists can and should be at the forefront for advocating for and facilitating optimum participation in parenting occupations for a wide variety of clients in any area of practice.
Parenting is a normative occupational role that many clients want and need to fulfil.
Occupational therapy has great potential to assist parents to optimise their competence and well-being in parenting occupations.
Yet the profile of occupational therapy in addressing parenting is currently low.
For parents with disability or other vulnerabilities, parenting is often ignored by health and social care professionals and little support offered. Frequently it is viewed using a risk framework, only becoming the subject of attention if problems emerge and a child is seen as at risk. When parenting is addressed, it is usually by other professions that lack OT’s practical focus on supporting occupations and our commitment to strengths based practice and occupational justice.
At OT4Parenting, we take a parent-centric view of parenting. This means we look at parenting in the same way we would look at employment or self-care roles – with an emphasis on the parent and their occupational performance and satisfaction.
This is in contrast to the child-centric perspective taken by paediatric OTs. With a child-centric approach the child is the primary client and OTs work with parents as partners in their child’s therapy or support them to best support their child.
This makes sense in paediatric practice but can mean that parenting support is mainly given if a child is in need or seen as being at risk. A parent-centric view means supporting parenting for primary adult clients.
