Do occupational therapists work with families?

Gabrielle Richards: Definitely we work with families, both in offering them support but also having that practical focus of working with their loved one in terms of meeting their aspirations and potential.

But equally with families, it’s about working in partnership to look at practical solutions and families are key players in supporting people on their recovery journey. So it’s crucial that we work with them, but it’s also helping families to make those adjustments – what’s going to work for them to keep their loved one on that recovery journey? So it’s often supporting families with tips and help and hints to work out what’s going to work for them and their family construct within their own home.

If somebody’s had an experience of somebody who has been particularly unwell for example, they may have been unsafe in terms of cooking and leaving the gas on and things like, well it’s working with not only a family member’s anxiety, but it’s also supporting that family member to say ‘what do you need to do to check to see if somebody has turned off the gas or not?’, ‘can you start to allow that person to do their own cooking and cleaning etc?’, so it’s often working with people’s anxiety, but also the practical things to say well, maybe having a cue card to say get somebody to put this in front of the stove to say that after 10 minutes they might want to turn it off...that sort of thing. So it’s quite practically based with the families as well.