New Roles for Occupational Therapy to Promote Independence Among Youth Aging Out of Foster Care

Abstract

Occupational therapy practitioners are qualified to address the needs of young adults transitioning out of the foster care system; yet, to date, the degree to which practitioners have addressed these needs has been limited. The literature on foster care clearly documents the myriad of long-term challenges that this population faces as a result of their lack of preparedness in independent living, academic, and vocational skills. Moreover, it is clear that existing programs are inadequate for meeting the needs of this population because they rarely include individualized, occupation-based, client-centered approaches for skill development. In this article, we argue that by design, the foster care system marginalizes its "members." Occupational therapy's emphasis on occupational justice provides practitioners with an ideal opportunity to remediate the injustice that this population often experiences. To support our position, we describe exploratory work that has been conducted with stakeholders and transitioning youth in Miami, Florida.

Toward a Defined Role for Occupational Therapy in Foster Care Transition Programming

“…Aging out of foster care has well documented challenges and is compounded by a range of adversities. This opinion piece supports previous work promoting the role of occupational therapy in foster care and further proposes intervention strategies supported by a literature review and a preliminary study ( Paul-Ward & Lambdin-Pattavina, 2016 ). Use of the PEOP model can assist in organizing future research endeavors related to outcomes and implementation.…”

Diverse Autonomic Nervous System Stress Response Patterns in Childhood Sensory Modulation

“…Aligning with NIMH Research Domain Criteria (RDoC; Sanislow et al, 2019), SMD can be viewed as an integral aspect of stress response physiology, providing an underlying dimension to join other categorical diagnostic entities formerly considered discrete. This supports work wherein SMD is expanded beyond neurodiverse populations, and considered an essential means of accessing evidence of autonomic dysregulation characteristic of various populations with vulnerable nervous systems, including individuals with prematurity, mental health diagnosis, or early adversity (Shonkoff et al, 2012;Paul-Ward and Lambdin-Pattavina, 2016;Pears et al, 2016;Andersen et al, 2018;Germain, 2018;Machingura et al, 2018;Brown et al, 2019;Mulkey and du Plessis, 2019).…”