Aim:

The aim of OT4Parenting is to conduct research promoting occupational therapy support for parenting for adult clients across the globe in diverse populations and practice settings.  

Background:

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.

One study found that OTs did not set parenting goals with their clients despite identifying clients who needed parenting support (Hackett and Cook, 2016). Another found that 98% of OTs working in the area of parental disability felt that the role of OT in this area needed to be advanced (Lampe et al., 2019).

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. 

In contrast, we believe that every parent matters and that 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.

Parent-centric focus:

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.

That is the other side of the coin from the usual child-centric view. From a child-centric perspective the child is the primary client, for example, where paediatric OTs work with parents of children with special needs as partners in their child’s therapy or part of the child’s environment. A parent-centric view means supporting parenting for primary adult clients. It also means that support is proactive and based on parents’ own perceived needs rather than reactive and based on a professional’s view of risk to the child.  

The aim is to optimise parenting role performance and well-being. This, however, is likely to also lead to enhanced child well-being.