FEATURE SERVICE DEVELOPMENT
telephone screening and at the end of the group and
score differentials are collected.
This, along with qualitative and quantitative
feedback collected from anonymous participant
surveys, helps guide our evaluation of the service.
What’s next?
This parent coaching approach has been gradually
rolled out to various populations and pathways
within our service. We have begun adapting it to
other populations such as families of children with
coordination difficulties, learning difficulties and
developmental delay. Excitingly, we are now in the
process of creating parent coaching groups for
families of children with neurodisabilities, with the
groups being based not only on the principles of
Occupational Performance Coaching (OPC) but also
drawing from Person Centred Active Support (PCAS).
Looking ahead, past the requirements of our service
during COVID-19, we intend to maintain a virtual
service as an option for families who would otherwise
have difficulty accessing face-to-face groups.
References
Foster L, Dunn W and Mische Lawson L (2012) Coaching
mothers of children with autism: A qualitative study for
occupational therapy practice. Physical and
Occupational Therapy in Pediatrics. DOI:10.3109/01942
638.2012.747581
Graham F, Rodger S and Ziviani J (2009) Coaching parents
to enable children’s participation: An approach for
working with parents and their children. Australian
What we learned: top five tips
Learn to fail: technical difficulties will happen,
these are opportunities to learn and evolve.
Be flexible: adapt to the needs and capacity of
the service and the families, for example varying
levels of staffing and varying technological
knowledge.
Listen to your service users: what you create
will not be perfect the first time and be ready to
continually make changes based on feedback
and other challenges.
Online is not the answer to everything:
due to varying reasons ranging from the child’s
specific needs to some families not having
internet (either before, during or after COVID-19).
Stay occupation focused and collaborate
with the families.
Occupational Therapy Journal, 56(1): 16-23
Graham F, Rodger S and Ziviani J (2013) Effectiveness of
occupational performance coaching in improving
children’s and mother’s performance and mothers’ selfcompetence.
American Journal of Occupational Therapy,
67, 10-18. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.5014/
ajot.2013/004648
Hilly C (2010) The collaborative goal setting experiences of
children with disabilities and occupational therapists.
Available at: https://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/
handle/2123/7790
Law M, Cooper BA, Strong S, Stewart D, Rigby P and Letts
L (1996) The person-environment-occupation
model: A transactive approach to
occupational performance. Canadian
Journal of Occupational Therapy, 63,
9-23
Townsend EA and Polatajko HJ (2007)
Enabling occupation II: Advancing
an occupational therapy vision for
health, wellbeing and justice
through occupation. Ottawa: CAOT
Publications ACE
Melissa Bautista, Tom
Burchfield, Vicky D’Abo, Marie
O’Connor and Karson Wong
on behalf of Evelina Community
Children’s Occupational Therapy
Team. With special thanks to Nena
Fletcher-Bell, occupational therapy
assistant.
18 OTnews August 2020