AWARDS FEATURE
FELLOWSHIP AWARDS
Fellowship Awards are the highest awards given by RCOT and are given in recognition of a person ’ s exceptional service and outstanding contribution to the profession during their career . To date , 111 have been awarded since 1972 . This year RCOT has awarded four Fellowships .
Professor Wendy Bryant Wendy ’ s career as an occupational therapist initially did not go quite how she hoped it would . After gaining her diploma at Dorset House School in 1984 , she envisaged doing research and working in adult mental health services in London .
However , for personal reasons , she worked in Coventry with older people , rotating to acute medicine and surgery , and then rheumatology .
Then she moved to Cambridge , to older people ’ s mental health services . She started a research project in 1987 , exploring the use of creative and sensory approaches , published in 1991 . By this time , she was living in Surrey and working in community mental health services . But work became less of a priority with the birth of her children , so she changed jobs again to an acute mental health unit nearer home .
She led another small research project , exploring social contact groups ( published in 1995 ). Then she worked for social services from 1996 until 2001 , when she moved to a community eating disorders team as temporary cover .
At this point she also took on some freelance lecturing , training and leadership roles while she finished her MSc , before becoming a full-time lecturer at Brunel University in 2003 .
Her MSc research was a funded focus group study of mental health day services and analysis of the service user data suggested the metaphor of living in a glasshouse as occupational alienation .
Wendy started her PhD with the same services in 2004 , supervised by user activist Peter Beresford and Elizabeth McKay . Her insights into occupational alienation and participatory research as an occupation directed her teaching , scholarship and research in subsequent years .
Research could be an alienating occupation for users , students and colleagues , so she carefully created , analysed and designed projects in collaboration where every activity and task was valued .
From 2007 to 2015 , she led participatory research teams investigating experiences of mental health services including nonstatutory community organisations , rehabilitation , acute mental health and a community arts project in a museum .
Wendy explored the implications of seeing research as an occupation by establishing a collaborative research group with mental health service users and practitioners from 2007 to 2013 . Their research focus on psychosis was agreed jointly , working through every aspect together .
Then , Wendy moved to the University of Essex , becoming Casson Lecturer in 2016 . This was an opportunity to draw together her insights into occupational alienation and participatory research .
Sadly , in 2018 she had to take retirement through ill-health with vasculitis , an auto-immune disorder . By this time , she was already committed to co-editing the sixth edition of the textbook Creek ’ s Occupational therapy and mental health . She had coedited the fifth edition , published in 2014 . The sixth edition will be published by Elsevier in 2022 and has proved to be an excellent transitional retirement project . The University of Essex made her an Honorary Professor in 2019 .
On receiving her award Wendy thanked the Royal College and said : ‘ Becoming a Fellow is a surprising and satisfying experience . Surprising because I never thought it would happen to me . Satisfying because in the process I have realised that although I can ’ t work now , I can and do influence the work of others .’
‘‘
Becoming a Fellow is a surprising and satisfying experience . Surprising because I never thought it would happen to me . Satisfying because in the process I have realised that although I can ’ t work now , I can and do influence the work of others .
OTnews October 2021 49