Occupational Therapy

Wednesday April 19th – Today we spent the morning with the occupational therapist, Shane. Shane started by lecturing about what occupational therapists do and the environments they work in. Later that morning he arranged for one of his clients to come in and talk to us. It was a person who had suffered brain injury due to encephalitis about 12 years ago. There was pretty significant damage to gross and fine motor skills. The person had been receiving O&M assistance as their vision had been affected as well, but also needed some additional OT for daily living skills. Shane and his client were very open about discussing the diagnoses and resulting damage. We observed Shane coaching the client through some hand therapy exercises. The last activity of the morning we participated in. We all went under blindfold, headed for the kitchen and had to make and eat our lunches under blindfold. We had to cut slices of bread off a loaf to make sandwiches. My slices were not very even, but I think I managed to get more mayonnaise on the bread than on myself. I had to slice tomato, cheese, and cucumber then try to pile them evenly on the bread. It wasn’t very pretty but it did taste good.
The afternoon was spent practicing the routes we are learning. It went much better for me today and I was actually able to cross the street straight! Thank goodness. On out way back to campus we stopped to see the Hays Paddock Adventure Playground for Children of All Abilities. This is the first community playground in Australia designed so that all children regardless of their physical or intellectual ability can play on an equal basis. The playground caters to all children including children challenged by hearing, sight, mobility, muscular control or behavior. Braille is being used along with sounds, like bells for sight-impaired children, and sign language for hearing-impaired and for those with learning difficulties or who can’t read yet there are simple line diagrams to indicate how to find things within the playground. For the wheelchair-bound there are of course ramps to allow access to the different levels of the equipment. It’s really a fantastic and well designed area. And yes, we did test drive some of the equipment!