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Jodi Adams, Brea Bushong, Eddie Colravy,
Dalenna Diep, Alliah Iqbal, Taylor Spivey,
Gina Tacud, Stephanie Tressel, Katy Wanner
Parkland College OTA Students Lending a Hand
Parkland College, located in Champaign, IL,
seeks opportunities to support the community
and provide students with enriched learning
experiences. Students of the Occupational Therapy
Assistant program at Parkland College are provided
with opportunities to give back to the community.
Many of these opportunities include providing OT-
related services to local homeless shelters, children in
schools, and individuals with disabilities; in places
such as the Young Adult Program of Champaign
Unit 4 Schools, Restoration Urban Ministries,
Garden Hills School, and Learning Information for
Everyday Clinic.
The Young Adult Program provides educational
and community training for people ages 18-21 years
old in natural environments appropriate for their
age group. The primary purposes of this program
are to foster age appropriate social skills and provide
opportunities to learn and practice life skills in
home management, meal preparation, leisure, and
work-related activities. The OTA students serve as
peer mentors to model college lifestyle and behavior
as well as assisting the fieldwork instructor. This
group met once a week to teach these young adults
a different life skill to use inside and outside of the
classroom.
Restoration Urban Ministries (RUM) in
Champaign, IL, is a non-profit organization for
people who are in need of temporary housing,
guidance, and counseling to get back on their feet.
They offer various skill building classes for the
residents such as game night, financial management
class, life skills, and nutrition class. The OTA
students learned how to work with individuals and
families in the community who needed assistance
to be successful in life. The OTA students led
sessions focused on enhancing self-advocacy, anger
management, and conflict resolution skills. The
program is based on a model of empowerment.
Students kept weekly reflective journals and
completed research on the impact of homelessness.
Each session began with students leading the
group through mindfulness activities and guided
meditations. Session activities consisted of self-
esteem and self-advocacy, goal setting, self-care, and
yoga. The students led group discussions, including
participation in worksheets, activities and games.
The sessions concluded by gathering together in a
circle and reading the serenity prayer.
The Parkland College OTA Program has
developed a free community-based clinic called
Learning Information for Everyday (L.I.F.E.) Clinic
for individuals who are underinsured, uninsured,
and/or under reimbursement restrictions. The
goal of this program is to allow two to three 1st
year Occupational Therapy Assistant students to
perform Level 1 hands-on work with clients under
the supervision of an OTR and COTA. The OTA
students provided a variety of services such as health
& wellness, education, and habilitation services to
clients in the community with chronic conditions.
Human beings are constantly seeking to learn skills
or improve skills previously acquired. For example,
as people age they are more susceptible to arthritis,
which can be very painful and can affect a person’s
quality of life or daily living. This is where habilitative
services can help because many of these individuals
may not qualify for rehabilitative services or may
not seek out medical attention for arthritic pain.
This is the main reason why our program director,
Michelle Roberts, and then-fieldwork-coordinator
Rebecca Bahnke, created the L.I.F.E Clinic. Students
assigned to this FW engaged in active learning by
researching the diagnosis and developing a therapy
session so that the individual with arthritic pain can
learn new skills or improve functioning for those
occupations that are important to them. Diagnoses
typically seen in L.I.F.E. clinic were fibromyalgia,
arthritis, chronic pain, and strokes. When asked
about the future of the clinic Roberts said, “I would
love to grow L.I.F.E. clinic into a level II clinical
where students helped run the clinic and provide
habilitative treatment” (M. Roberts, personal
communication, September 19, 2018). Asked what
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