Prospering Through Change CAOT from 1991 to 2001 by Mary Clark Green, Michelle Lertvilai and Kammie Bribriesco
Prospering through change CAOT FROM 1991 TO 2001 By Mary Clark Green, Michelle Lertvilai and Kammie Bribriesco Occupational therapists have not only managed change–they have prospered by it…. The voyage is your career, and together with others across Canada, it shapes the history of occupational therapy and CAOT. —Sandra Bressler, CAOT President, June, 1997 COPM launch in 1992 at the Clarke Institute,Toronto,ON.Authors from l-r:Nancy Pollock,Mary Ann McColl, Helene Polatajko,Sue Baptiste and Mary Law;CAOT Executive Director Anne Strickland. Missing.Author Anne Carswell uring the 1990’s occupational therapists contin- D ued to be challenged with change. Reduced public spending led to health reforms that directly affected day-to- Canadians day practice and created shifts in every aspect of the profes- (CAOT, 1993). Activities sion, from our scope of practice to our education standards, occurred at both a national level and in two from the ways we worked, to where we worked. At the CAOT pilot sites (St. John’s, Newfoundland and Winnipeg, Conference in 1991 keynote speaker Steven Lewis, former Manitoba). During the project three issue papers were pub- leader of the national New Democratic Party, acclaimed occu- lished that outlined the challenges for occupational therapists pational therapy as “the only health profession that had fully in adopting a health promotion framework. An important embraced the concepts of: health promotion and prevention, outcome of the project was For the Health of It! Occupational community-based care and the individual as centre to the Therapy within a Health Promotion Framework, published by process (Perspectives ’91 – Taking the Initiative, National CAOT to assist occupational therapists and other health pro- Newsletter, September 1991, page 11).
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