Feature/RCOT
A summary of Gary Waltham’s online blog on what he’s heard in his first three months and how your feedback is shaping what comes next.
As I come to the end of my third month at RCOT, I’ve been reflecting on what’s been a wonderful 12 weeks getting to know the organisation and our membership. Connecting with hundreds of OTs has helped me understand more about your working lives, the pressures you face and your hopes for the future of the profession.
I don’t yet have all the insights or the answers, but I’m beginning to see an increasingly clearer picture of the challenges and opportunities ahead and how BAOT and RCOT need to evolve and strengthen the value they provide to you as members.
What I’ve enjoyed most is your focus on occupational justice and improving lives. Even when feeling fatigued or demoralised because of workloads and system challenges, you talk about moments when you or a colleague have helped transform a person’s life – and your faces light up. That’s been really inspiring for me.
Many OTs have described feeling disconnected from principles of self empowerment, belonging and meaningful participation. One member put it to me that occupational therapy has an ‘identity crisis’.
A strong professional identity is essential, yet many of you describe invisibility, poor representation and inconsistent positioning. The consequence is a profession whose impact is profound, but whose visibility doesn’t always match it, leaving people feeling undervalued and isolated.
I’ve heard consistent feedback that defining occupational therapy can feel circular and exhausting. We need to spend less time debating what occupational therapy is and more time demonstrating the impact of what occupational therapy does.
Evidence, health economics, impact data and lived experience speak more powerfully than definitions ever will. RCOT must lead from the front and support you to amplify that impact locally.
Across all four nations, I’ve been hearing about high workloads, limited recognition and burnout. Many of you have told me about challenges accessing leadership pathways and positions. I’ve met many outstanding OT leaders, but lots of you struggle to see yourselves in those roles, or to find opportunities to build confidence and leadership skills.
Leadership grows through coaching, mentoring and structured support and RCOT can and should play a more active role. Our governance is one of the places where this becomes real. By opening more routes for members to contribute formally, we can create leadership pathways that feel achievable and inclusive.
Evidence and impact data are essential to strengthening the profession’s voice. RCOT can curate, connect and make accessible the evidence that already exists, and support OT research projects where possible. I can picture a future where members have a clear, accessible space for all OT evidence; a place that grows over time, shaped by your contributions.
Students, learners and early career OTs have been honest about pressures from challenging placements to uncertainty about opportunities after qualification. If we are serious about strengthening the profession long term, RCOT must be relevant, useful and supportive from the very start of a person’s professional journey.
I am proud to have joined an organisation that has invested in Equity, Diversity and Belonging (EDB) and while there’s a lot more work to do, has made a demonstrable commitment.
While the profession promotes inclusion in practice, many members, particularly from marginalised backgrounds, continue to face discrimination, barriers to progression and lack of representation. RCOT has an essential role to play here. We must embed EDB into everything we do, not as an initiative, but as a core principle of what it means to belong to a professional body.
We’re now shaping our new organisational strategy, which will launch later this year, and the insight you’ve already shared with me is supporting the development of our strategic aims.
What’s becoming clear to me now is that RCOT must strengthen the profession’s identity and visibility, enable leadership pathways, use evidence to inform advocacy, and champion inclusive and psychologically safe workplaces. These are essential.
Occupational therapy has a powerful story to tell, but the workforce must feel seen, supported, valued and connected. Your voice is already helping to shape our future direction, and I’ll keep listening.
Words GARY WALTHAM, RCOT Chief Executive. Gary and Odeth Richardson, Chair of Council, have been meeting members in person across all four nations. Read the blogs about their visits, and the full blog of this summary, at www.rcot.co.uk/latest-news/conversation-with-gary.