top of page

OTS 41: Building a School-Based Occupational Profile

Updated: May 29


ree

Press play below to listen to the podcast

Or click on your preferred podcast player link!

ree
ree
ree

Welcome to the show notes for Episode 41 of the OT Schoolhouse Podcast.


Have you ever gotten halfway through an assessment and realized you could have saved yourself so much time if you had just done a little homework? If so, you may want to check out this episode.

​

In episode 41, Jayson talks about the AOTA Occupational Profile and how it can be better suited to meet the needs of school-based and pediatric occupational therapists. We will look at why it is important to build an occupational profile and how to best do that in the schools to save you time and energy!


Plus, subscribe to the OTSH Email list below to get your very own copy of the Occupational Profile For School-Based OTs discussed in Episode 41 of the OTSH Podcast!





Links to Show References:







Be sure to subscribe to the OT School House email list & get access to our free downloads of Gray-Space paper and the Occupational Profile for school-based OTs.


Have any questions or comments about the podcast? Email Jayson at Jayson@otschoolhouse.com

Well,


Thanks for visiting the podcast show notes! If you enjoyed this episode be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts



Episode Transcript


Expand to view the full episode transcript

 

Amazing Narrator   

Hello and welcome to the OT school house podcast, your source for school based occupational therapy tips, interviews and professional development. Now to get the conversation started, here is your host. Jayson Davies class is officially in session.  

 

Jayson Davies   

Hey everyone. And welcome to episode 41, of the OT school house. My name is Jayson Davies, and I am your host now and forever. Thank you so much for joining me wherever you are today. I really appreciate it, whether you're at the gym in the car on your way home from work or maybe you're on your way to a conference in a plane. Just thank you so much for joining me today. Today, I have something really special that I want to share with you all after we take a look actually, at the occupational therapy practice framework published by a OTA. Of course, you can get that for free on the Asia ot website. You don't even actually have to be a member of a OTA in order to access that one. It's one of those, like powerhouse articles that they want everyone to have access to. So it is free. So we're going to look at a small section of the otpf today, but first, I want to start off by sharing a little bit about what's going on with me, as well as ot school house as a whole. So first of all, you might be able to hear it a little bit in my voice, but I am trying to get over this nagging cold that's just been kind of having me struggling to stay awake and struggling to get stuff done for the past week or so, and so I'm trying to get over that, but I'm here being optimistic and just trying to get some stuff just put down on the mic so that we can have another great episode. So we're gonna get through it today. Please excuse my voice, but we'll get through it today, next time, we'll come back stronger than ever. But even more so, I want to say that you know this, this start to the 2019, 2020, school year has just been a little bit of a struggle for me. There's just so much going on. You know, I've got a large workload, caseload, whatever you want to call it, and that's another episode that I want to have with us at another time. But, you know, it's just been a lot on my plate at school, and then between that and some other roles that I've taken on, be it at OT or just with the OT school house, man, it's just it's been a little strong. It's been a little bit a little tough for me this, this past past few months. So I just want to put it out there, but I want to say thank you so much for all of your support. I appreciate all the emails, all the Instagram shares, all the Facebook posts that you guys I mean, I I need to take a picture of this, but I've got a little wall going on here that I've started just with some of those emails that you guys send, or whatever that say. Thank you, just because it keeps me going, between you guys and my wife and the support that I have around me that just keep pushing me to do this, sometimes it's a struggle. After coming home from a long day of work and hopping on the mic, I love doing it, but sometimes it's a struggle to get started. Once I get started, there's no stopping. But yeah, it's just been a little a little tough this past few months at work and with everything going on. But with that said, I am working on something very special for you all, actually, and I can't wait to have this done. It's going to be an actual webinar. Course I'm putting it together. I'm hoping to have it done by January, it's gonna be somewhere around eight videos or something like that, and it's gonna be all about school based ot it's gonna be great for you guys, and I can't wait to get that out and share more information about it. I'm just not ready to do it yet, but hopefully come January, I'll have something super special for you, and you guys will be super excited. I can't wait to share it with you all. Yeah, I've been working on it for a while now, and it's going to be awesome. So with that, we are going to jump into the occupational therapy practice framework, also known as the otpf, from the A OTA, and as ot we're going to look at a very small section of it. Some of you who have subscribed to the OT School House website on not just the podcast, but also the website, you've already, at least, probably seen it. You may have you may have downloaded it. You may have skipped over that. A lot of people I know join the website to get the gray space paper. Another thing I haven't mentioned in a while, but it is a paper that you get for free when you subscribe. But the other thing, or one of the other things that I also give away for people who subscribe to the website, is called the school based occupational therapy profile. And so that's what I want to jump into today, the occupational profile, and what that is, what it looks like, why we do this and how it can help you and your practice in your evaluations and moving forward into your treatment. So we're going to get into that right now. But first, I want to review just what the otpf, the occupational therapy practice framework, says about the occupational profile. All right, so many of you are probably familiar with the concept of an occupational profile. You've heard. Of it. You kind of know that it's a snapshot, if you want to call it that, of our client or of the student that we work with. But I want to go a little bit deeper first by starting off with what the otpf actually says about an occupational profile. And so I'm going to read this verbatim real quick from the otpf, and it says that the initial step in the evaluation process which provides an understanding of the client's occupational history and experiences, patterns of daily living, interests, values and needs, the client's reason for seeking services, strengths and concerns in relationship to performing occupations and daily life activities, areas of potential occupational disruption, supports and barriers and priorities are also identified, and that is within the occupational profile. So it really is this all encompassing picture of what's going on with our student, what are the strengths, the weaknesses, what is also going on in the world of that child? You know, what's going on in the classroom, at recess, at lunch, things like that. What does this child need help with accessing? You know, there's a difference between this is where we get into that medical versus educational model. As school based OTs, we are paid by taxpayers. I mean, if you go all the way up the steps, right? And so there are some specific areas that we are to look at. We're not a medical based ot we are looking at the student's ability to get to the educational curriculum. So that's something that we need to take into consideration. The Occupational Therapy profile. You know, one thing that they do say in the otpf again, is that just because the student may be your client doesn't necessarily mean that all the information has to come from that client or that student. It says that you're allowed to get other information from the family, friends or other permanent people in that that person's life. And so again, not just getting information from the student. Of course, if this is a I don't know, a kid, maybe older than third grade or around that age, you can get information from them, but you should also, again, get information from the parent, the teacher. Maybe there's noon duty aids, or a recess or lunch aids, a principal, anyone who has some input on the student that can help you develop your occupational profile. So I'm going to go into some of the categories right now that they actually have on the A O T, A occupational profile. They have four sections titled client report, environment, context and client goals, and in these areas, you know, we're asking, Why is the person seeking services and and what things are they successful in, versus what are they not feeling successful in? What are some of their values and their their occupational history, their life experiences, and then also performance patterns, such as the routines, the roles, their habits. You know, all those things that we look at, are they able to succeed in these, these important aspects of their life? And then you start to look at the environmental factors, and that's, you know, the physical factors, such as, you know, where they go. Can they access the buildings? Can they access the school environment? Can they access the playground, and then also in their social environment, you know, what are their social skills potentially look like? What does their their network look like? Do they have friends? Do they not have friends? Are they scared to come to school? Potentially? What does that social environment look like? And then you also have their context, cultural, personal, temporal, and one that I really appreciated when I saw this is virtual. Obviously, virtual is a huge context. We're using a virtual platform right now as you listen to me. So the virtual thing is coming. Telehealth is coming. It's already here, actually. So virtual is something that we definitely need to look at. And then, of course, client goals. And you know, we wouldn't have a job if it didn't come down to client goals. And we're going to get a little bit deeper into the client goals in a minute, but I just want to say that is somewhere that we definitely need to be looking at. And I think that's one area that sometimes we forget to really look at. We kind of think, What is our goal for this? For the person, but we need to be considering what their goals are. So yeah, we'll get back to that in just a minute. So those are the areas that a OTA really thinks that we should look at when we're when we're conducting an occupational profile. But as I read it and I look at it and again, all of you can access the A Ota otpf online. It is a free download for anyone. You don't have to be a member to get this one, because they really, I mean, it's basically mandatory if you're in some sort of medical field, because I believe it's a requirement to get reimbursement. Is using the occupational profile. Of course, being in schools, we have a kind of different mindset, like I was talking about earlier. We're. Funded by the taxpayers, not necessarily funded through insurance, but we still need to take into consideration this occupational profile. But again, if you've ever seen it, if you haven't, I encourage you to go look at it, because when I read it, when I look at it, it doesn't feel like it is as applicable to what we are doing in school based occupational therapy, as well as in pediatric occupational therapy, because things change when you're working with a child or a student. You know, this is a very young mind that we're working with, and oftentimes, I mean, all the time, there is someone else, there are other people that are often giving us information that are that is not the child. And so when I look at the occupational therapy profile from a OTA, I kind of see this, this picture. I kind of get the mindset of a therapist talking to the client and getting a one to one relationship with them, and getting a lot of information from that client, maybe some record review, but it doesn't really have the tone of getting everything from all the people around the child and student and so actually, I've had this for a while. Like I said earlier, I developed it about two years ago, but I want to make sure that you all know about it and have access to it, because I'm not, because I'm now going to go over kind of my adaptation for this that I created. And it is, I call it the school based occupational profile, because I just adapted it slightly to make it more school based relatable. And, you know, I do want to share this with you all, and so I didn't make huge changes. I just made it seem more appropriate for school based and pediatric therapists and models. So I'm going to share that with you right now, actually, and you'll see there's not a lot of changes, but there are some significant, small changes, all right, before I get into that, I do realize that many of you are very visual and that you like to have something in front of you when someone's talking about something. So before I get into the details of this, I do want to let you know that you can get this occupational profile for school based. OT is completely free. All you have to do is go to OT schoolhouse.com, forward slash episode 41 if you're on Apple podcast or some of the other platforms, there's a show notes link right there. Just click on that. It'll take you there. You'll fill out the form which subscribes you to my website, which is just for emails and such, completely free. And you will actually get a link in your email about how to access the this form that I'm talking about. So if you want to press pause here real quick, get that and then come back so you have it in front of you. Now is the time to do that otherwise. Go ahead, listen on, and I will share again at the end of the episode how you can get access to it. So let's jump into it. So just like the occupational profile from a OTA, I have four separate overarching categories, I guess you could call them, and that is student history, environment, context. And instead of client goals, I said priorities, just because I like that word a little bit better. And there are so many different priorities coming from different people. And you'll see when I get down to that, why I broke it down into priorities. So first, within the student history, there's five different kind of questions, slash areas to look at, and the first one is, who's referring the child for ot services, and what are their concerns related to school engagement? So that's the first thing we need to know. Who is saying, hey, this student needs to be referred. Is it the parent? Is it the teacher? Is it someone else, the principal, the assistant principal, maybe it's coming from a counselor or school psychologist, and what did they what did they see? Obviously, a teacher or a parent is going to see something that's so much different than a school psychologist who has done like standardized testing with the student, and maybe they saw some visual motor skills that were lower while the vision processing abilities were high, and so they say, okay, maybe there's some fine motor delays there, versus the teacher might say, you know, their handwriting is just horrendous. Or maybe it's the parent that's saying he just can't get to school in the morning. We can't get him up. We can't get him moving. He's like, terrified of coming to school. Whatever it is. We need to know who's referring that student, or maybe it's the entire team, and they all have a general consensus of a concern, and we need to know what that concern is, because that's what we're, in theory, really going to hone in on, on our evaluation. The next area of that is, what are the students strengths in school? So what can the student do in school? What is he capable of doing independently or with very little assistance. Keep in mind that, you know, a lot of kids need help with something, and just because a kid needs a little bit of help with cutting doesn't mean that that can't be a strength relative strengths versus relative weaknesses. But again, strength based approach so that what are the students strengths? The next item I put here, again, under Student history, is, how does the student feel towards school? What does the student enjoy about school? You know, that's something important, whether it comes from the student or from his teacher or the parent, again, anyone around the student. What does that student enjoy? Does he enjoy? I'm going to use he just because it's easier for me to stay on one track, but does he enjoy going to recess, or does he like Is he scared of math? Does he enjoy reading, but not like writing? What are the areas that the student enjoys and again, is he able to enjoy school as a whole? I often say, as educators, you know, our first job is to get that student to want to come to school, just because, you know how much, how much work are we really going to get, or how much learning are we really going to get out of that student if they just hate and dread being there. So what does the student feel about school? The next area is occupational and medical history, both inside and outside of school. Often, you know, we look at the vision and hearing screening that is conducted, but we need more than that. You know, we need to call the parent and say, Hey, what's going on? How was that child's birth? Was everything normal at that point? Has the student gone through any therapy? Has the student had any traumatic events in their life, surgeries, extended periods in the hospital, long sicknesses, or maybe there's a death in the family, or something that can have that that just mind changing experience. Maybe it's a specific diagnosis that we would never have found out just by looking at just other reports within the student's educational records. So we need to call the parent. We need to find out some occupational and medical history. Occupational history, you know, has a student, did they meet their developmental milestones on time? Are they mostly independent at home, getting dressed? Are they able to do that thing, those types of things, or do they need a lot of help? Obviously, of course, we're looking at school based occupations, but some of those occupations that we find out about at home kind of gives us a more rounded picture of the student, and it might lead us to kind of have some ideas about what might be going on if they're having difficulty sequencing at school and they're having difficulty figuring out how to put their shoes on the right way and how to tie their shoes. Yeah, you know, there might be a correlation. It might be something going on that's affecting both areas, all right. And so the last area that I have here under Student history, that we really need to look at is school related history. And you know, that includes everything from RTI services response to intervention or MTSS, if you want to call it that, what have they interacted in in school? What have their IEP services and goals look like? You know, what types of services do they actually receive? Are they in ABA or do they receive ABA services? Do they have a one on one aid or not? Do they have goals related to fine motor skills, or are their goals more academic and sense? How old is the student? When did they first start school? Have they been in school since the preschool age? Or did they not start until they turned five in kindergarten? All these things are important also. Did they have an IFSP or, I mean, maybe that can be a little hard to find out, but the parent will be able to tell you, did they have an IFSP, and why, and what was the basis around the IFSP? Did they have a diagnosis already? All these things are school related history that are so important also, you know, has the student been held back a year for some reason? And if so, why was it because of grades immaturity? Why did the parent or the school decide to do that? Those are all very important school related information, also grades. You know, those can be a little hard to track down sometimes, but if you can get either most recent grades or current grades, all that that helps in developing your report and mindset for what this student potentially needs help with All right, so that wraps up the student history portion of the occupational profile for school based OT, but it leads us into the environment factors. And again, this is going to look at physical environment as well as social roles and expectations. And there's a reason we look at physical environment and their social roles after we do the student history or look at the student history, and that's because and that's because, again, up in the student history, we looked at, why is this student being referred for services? And so that's the real important part, right? So maybe it all has to do with desk work. Then when it comes to the environment, we really need to see that student at their desk doing desk work. And what is the concern, and what does the environment look at look like at their desk, you know, is the chair the right size? Is the desk the right size for both the student and the chair? Is he able to see the board, or is he is his back to the board and he has to turn around to look at it? What are those factors in the classroom that could be preventing this? Student, of course, when we also go back and look at the medical history, there might be something there as well. You know, depending on the diagnosis the student may have, maybe they have auditory sensitivity, and so we need to make note of how loud it is in the classroom, or what's the visual field of sight for that student, what is he seeing every time he looks up? Is he seeing a rainbow on the wall that's just distracting the heck out of him, or is he looking up and seeing the whiteboard and being able to focus on that? Maybe there's a concern out at the re out at recess, and so we need to look at the recess equipment. Is the student able to access the recess equipment? Maybe there's adapted tools that the student is already using. We should be able to note this. We shouldn't be going into an IEP and having to ask, Oh, does the student already do this? Have you tried this? No, we should already know that. We should have asked the teacher already, or the principal or the parent, has the student ever tried adapted pencils, adapted scissors, pencil grips, whatever. You know, there's so many things out there that we can get by having conversations with people in the other area of the environment is the social roles and expectations, and again, both in class as well as outside the classroom, what is the peer and adult interactions like in that classroom? Does the student isolate himself or herself from others, from the teacher? You know? What are they able to Who are they able to get help from? You know, teachers will often teach a student to ask a peer before they come up and ask the teacher, so, is that happening? Or does the student refuse to talk to anyone around in the group? Are they able to follow directions? If so, how many directions are they able to follow? Can they simply get up, push their chair in and go line up. Like do they need multiple cues to do that? Or is that something that they can do with one cue? Also the difference between a novel and a familiar direction. You know that one that I just mentioned, getting up, pushing your chair, going lining up. They've been doing that since kindergarten. But what about something new? I don't have something off the top of my head, but there's always so many things going on that are new to a classroom, you know? And so we need to, hopefully we can see that during an observation. The next area is context, and this is an area that gets a little more personal, you know, we're looking at the cultural context, personal context, temporal context, and again, virtual context. And so cultural is one that's a little tricky to get into, but there are things that we can ask our parents and our teachers about. And when I say cultural, I don't just mean like the student's background, but also the culture of the classroom. What does that look like? Do they have a good culture? And this kind of goes in with the social roles and expectations. But again, are there classroom jobs and things like that going on, or does the teacher expect the student to be at their desk all the time, personal context as well? You know, just kind of this kind of goes back a little bit to the history. But you know, what does the student like dislike at school? Things that just kind of odds and ends that you kind of want to get from a typically, that'll come from a student interview, if you can get it. And then there's the temporal factors, you know, what is the student's age at this time, as well as their developmental age in relationship to their peers. You know, do they seem immature or very mature? Do they enjoy talking to their peers, or do they need the structure of talking to an adult? And then the last one is virtual context. And again, this is just becoming so important to look at. How are students able to use and interact with virtual components. You know, a lot of times I see kids getting put onto a computer, and they don't have the attention span to either a not press a button until after the question has been read to them, or B, they just like spam everything. Or they don't even know how to get like to the actual program that they're supposed to be on. And so that takes a lot of a lot of assistance. And do they have a one on one aid to help them with that? Or do they have a teacher that has a small enough class to be able to help them to do that? Is there something that you as the OT can help them with virtual Of course, we're seeing it so much more in schools, and it's a trend that we're going to have to start getting used to, all right. And so the last area of this one pager, the occupational profile, is priorities. And in the OTs version of the occupational profile, they just have it as client priorities. But here, I thought this was extremely important, and so I really broke it down. I broke it down into three specific sections, and that is student priorities, parent priorities and teachers priorities, because everyone has a different priority, it seems like. And you know, like I was saying anywhere around third grade, even even slightly younger, if they're. 30 into what's going on, a student can give you their priorities for school. They can tell you what they like, they can tell you what they don't like. They can tell you what's important to them and probably what's not so important to them. Even kindergarteners can do that for the most part. But as school based OTs, and generally, as any ot working with students or kids, we also, of course, have to take into account the parent priorities. And what does the parent want for their student? What is important to that parent? Does the parent care that their handwriting is messy but legible? Does the parent not think that their handwriting is legible at all? Does the parent see them not able to access the curriculum at all. Or do they see them? You know, they're doing okay and PE they're doing okay in math, but language arts are just they're just not gonna they're just not getting it, and they don't understand anything. Same thing with the teacher. What do they see? What do they see as a strength? Do they see this student as being able to learn in the classroom? Or do they feel already at this point, when the student's being referred, that they're at their max and they need help, maybe? Do they think that the student needs to be potentially worked individually with? Or does the teacher have priorities such as maybe us coming into the classroom to teach them strategies? The reason it's so important to start here at the beginning of our evaluation, getting those priorities is because then we're more likely to have success at the end, when we know what they're looking for, and we know what type of treatment or what type of help those people need, maybe again, the parent their priority is To keep that kid in classroom, in the classroom, and the teacher's priority is to say, or they're saying, I need help. I need the resources in order to help this kid. Well, then why are we going to then go into the into the IEP and recommend that the student be pulled out? I mean, the parents priorities are to keep the kid in in the classroom, and the teacher says, I need help, so why not go with some sort of collaborative model in the classroom, and then maybe the students priorities are recess. But you know, of course, that's why the occupational profile is so important, to get everyone's priorities. Because, of course, the kid may be a kindergarten, third grader student, so we need to get the priorities of everyone, and we need to take those in mind when we're writing up our evaluation and making our recommendation for goals and services. All right, I hope that makes sense to everyone. I know you may not have it right in front of you right now, but this is free on my website, and it's going to continue to be free, and I want you all to have access to it. So in order to get that go, ahead and head over to OT schoolhouse.com forward slash episode 41 that is the show notes for this episode. I will have there a little form for you to sign up and access the occupational profile for school based OTs. And if you are already a subscriber to the OT school house and you're just like, Man, I need to get my hands on this. But I don't remember going to your email first and just type in OT school house, it'll be actually a link in the first email you ever received from me. So if you can find that, then go ahead and click on the link to get your freebies, and you'll be able to access it. If you can't find that email for whatever reason, go ahead shoot me an email. I will respond to you with a link in order to get that download. Again. It's called the occupational profile for school based OTs, and you will be able to access that at ot schoolhouse.com, forward slash episode 41 Yeah. So that is the gist of what I wanted to talk about today. I do want to really reinforce that this occupational profile should be the first thing that you do when you start an evaluation. You know, you get that referral, that assessment plan, and you're like, all right, I got 60 days to get this referral done. Ideally, of course, ideally, trust me, this doesn't happen to me very often, but ideally, you start working on that occupational profile in the first week, you call up the parent, you send the teacher a questionnaire if you need to, or you somehow get them on the phone. I know they're busy, but you somehow get on the phone with them, or stop by their classroom and find out what those concerns are. Is because too often I've been in the situation where I've done it backwards and I've done maybe the bot, you know, I do the bot too. And I'm like, Wow, this kid did really well in the bot too, because I didn't get my occupation or profile first, and I didn't realize that fine motor skills weren't the concern. Oh, well, duh. Why am I doing the bot too? If it's not fine motor skills and visual motor skills is a concern. No, I went ahead. I go through I talk to the parent, I talk to the teacher, and I find out, Oh, it all has to do with sensory regulation in the classroom. Student can't focus to save their life. And now, well, I'm going back and I'm doing something different. Now, I'm pulling out the SPM, or the sensory profile, and I'm going into the classroom and I'm. Looking at the observations that I should have done two weeks ago, and if I would have done that two weeks ago, then I would have saved myself a little bit of time with the bot. And so that's where this occupation profile can really help, not only to, you know, get it right, to help the student the most, but also to save you time, to save your energy, and to help you figure out what the next step should be, because once you know what that student's history is, once you know the environment that they're in, once you know all this context about the student, as well as the priorities from the parents, the teachers, the student, and of course, don't stop there, if you if you need to, you know, go to the assistant principal, Principal, counselor, psychologist, whoever's making that referral, you need to get them some input from them and get those priorities and then figure out, okay, what tools do I need to use in order to figure out where the concern is or the depth of the concern? It'll save you a lot of time. It'll help you get the best evaluation possible. And, yeah, I mean, it's just the way that I believe an evaluation should actually happen. And unfortunately, we get pressed for time, and sometimes we end up doing it backwards. And yeah, it's, you know, I'm not gonna sit here and say, Don't do it. Don't do it the other way. I mean, I'm gonna say, hopefully you can do it occupational profile first, but overall crunch for time. I've done it backwards, but just trying to tell you in advance, it it hurts. Sometimes when you do it that way, you end up doing more work than you need to, and then you're doing the evaluation, or you're rewriting the evaluation because of new information that you got that you didn't have before you started. So, yeah, I hope you enjoyed this. This is this episode was all about the occupational profile, specifically for school based OTs. It does overlap a little bit with pediatrics, but yeah, I hope you will go grab it at ot schoolhouse.com. Forward slash, Episode 41 it is just a one page form that you can print out and use it over and over again. Just put it on your clipboard when you go in for that observation and start to get some some notes from the teacher and and have it there when you call the parent. Yes, I do absolutely believe that you need to call the parent, or at least at the very minimal, send home some sort of questionnaire that helps you out with getting some of that information, even if it's an electronical questionnaire that you can email out, but you need to somehow be getting information from the people that are involved in this student's life and school education. So yeah, that's all I have for you today. I hope you appreciated this podcast episode, it's been a pleasure being here for you all. I can't wait to see you all again in two weeks for another episode. So take care. Have a great week. Two weeks, and we'll see you next time. Bye, bye. Thank 

 

Amazing Narrator   

you for listening to the OT schoolhouse podcast for more ways to help you and your students succeed right now, head on over to otschoolhouse.com Until next time class is dismissed.



Click on the file below to download the transcript to your device.





ree


Single post: Blog_Single_Post_Widget

Recommended Next

bottom of page