OPC - Fi Graham

Professional Development Topic - Occupational Performance Coaching created by Fi Graham. Fi is in the middle of developing this intervention approach. In this approach the therapist works with the parent ( I feel it has potential to be applied with teachers) and assists them to enable their own child.
The OPC has three enabling domains, these include 1) Emotional support 2) Information Exchange 3) Structured Process.
Emotional Support includes, Listen, Empathise Reframe, Respect and Encourage
Information Exchange includes, performance analysis, typical development, health conditions and impairment, teaching and learning strategies, enabling tricks and community resources and entitlements.
Structures process includes, set goals, explore options, plan actions carry out plan, check performance.
In our professional development session we briefly discussed the OPC and were provided with a copy of the following article. Graham, F,. Rodger, S. & Ziviani, J. (2008). Coaching parents to enable childrens particpation: An approach for working with parents and their children. Austrailian Occuaptional Therapy Journal doi:10.1111/j.1440-1630.2008.00736.x

Many aspects of the OPC are already used in our everyday practice. In addition to this it was also highlighted by Cassarda that the OPC uses terminology and tools also shared with some of our multi disciplinary peers.This made me think is the OPC a OT only tool or does it have the potential to be used by others......?. Even though the OPC uses many shared tools that it has an aspect with is unique to OT's. Fi points this out as being focusing on occupational performance concerns, collaborative analysis and parent initiated findings. I feel that only the focus on occupational concerns is pure OT the other parts collaborative analysis and parent initiated findings are unique to this model but not to the field of OT.

I will be interested in hearing what others think once they have had time to read the article and consider its use in OT practice.

Take care Rita