Therapeutic Occupation and Intervention for a Group of Clients - Research Proposal Example

An analysis of a therapeutic occupation and intervention for a group of Section Describe your client group a) Describe of the client group- referring to a profile of your client population in an appendix. This paper identifies client group as adolescence between the ages of 10-19 suffering from autism. Autism is associated with the impairment of brain development leading to a lack of social intercourse and communication. Such children, usually before 3 years of age, also display repetitive behavior. Since it involves a range of symptoms, a more convenient term to use is the autism spectrum disorders (ASD). For instance some milder signs might indicate a low level of impairment. There are two different ways in which those participants in client group are selected. Random selection can be adopted as a better method which would enable the students randomly participates in the process. Secondly non-random selection can be adopted in order to obtain a particular point of view of the participants. Subject to the above criteria the adolescence of the client group will be involved in cooking activities, explorations and studies to find out ways and means to improve the existing occupational standards and performance at the school and home activities. In this respect the following reasons for the members’ participation must be noted. Potential members of the client group would be required to serve as participants in therapy, designers or planners, their contribution to the development of both the school curriculum and home activities would be of immense help in the future because there would be many positive outcomes, client group’s expertise could be used to enhance the existing resource base (College of Occupational Therapists, 2002). 100 adolescence participants were enlisted in this therapy in order to obtain their feedback on concerning some of the cooking activities and their impact on the development of student performance of the home and school environment. While responses of participants were measured according to a site of weighting the overall learning outcomes were given a priority weighting depending on the relative importance of each activity. b) Consider the clients’ expected occupational performance and discuss the importance of productivity and leisure in occupational balance and to health and wellbeing. Occupational performance of autistic children in the age group between 10 to 19 has to be determine against three causal factors, such as a. The autistic’s immediate environment, e.g. home b. The autistic’s extended environment, e.g. school c. The non-physical psychological environment The home environment of the autistic child is essentially characterized by the same elements as found in any other ordinary environment though the extent to which the home environment of the autistic child impacts on their behavior cannot be determined without a proper focus of attention on the environment related variables such as parental involvement in the dyslexic’s behavior alteration efforts and attitudes of neighbors’. The home environment of the autistic child is also subject to influence from other factors such as the level of participation in activities that are more likely to stimulate the autistic’s interest in the activity (Atchison, & Dirette, 2006). The school environment of the autistics is second significant causal factor and reading and learning are the two factors that decide the success of a child during his school career. Initially he learns to read. After that he reads to learn. As such reading is of paramount importance in the educational process. Unfortunately poor reading skills, and as a result poor learning skills, have become a stark reality for a disturbing number of children. Autistic is characterized by impaired social interaction, communication and repetitive behaviors. Thus it cause to the children to experience the world differently when it’s compared to the other children in the same age. Therefore it‘s very difficult to autistics children to interact and talk with the other people especially they are lack in expressing the words in their own. Therefore it is very important to staying healthy in physically and mentally in order to improve the performance of client group’s particular activities in the home and school level. Occupation consists of three areas including self-care, productivity and leisure and being fit is getting nutritious foods, sufficient physical activity and leisure activities. Thus it would drive the brain development of the children and occupational balance of their day-to-day activities. Since autistic children often lack in basic social and personal skills and they required some independent living guidance and also the support from the occupational therapist. c) Analyze and recommend how specific occupations can be used to address your clients’ functional limitations due to impairment, activity limitation and participation restriction. Cooking therapy can be regarded as the excellent therapeutic intervention technique for the autistic children especially who are impaired with social interaction, communication, and repetitive behavior. Thus most of the times autistic children are with abnormal behaviors in day-to-day life, though cooking therapy would address to those limitations of the autistic children. Activity limitation and the participation restriction of the autistic children would be determined by the impairment. Therefore there is a necessity to prevent physical impairment of the autistic children by active participation and executing activities in the process of cooking activity (Christiansen & Townsend, 2004). Especially autistic children tend to be more drooping physical posture, looking sideways and shy of social interaction withdrawn from the rest and above all doing repetitive actions and cooking therapy enabled the autistic children to improve their social interaction, social skills and expand social networks. Thus cooking therapy can be applied to the autistic children in a leisure manner in order to improve their mobility, self care and communication. However cooking is not being just a task and it will change the mind of the autistic children and improve the functional independence. Thus cooking therapy can be used to the autistic children to - guide them for new ways of approaching tasks; breakdown some activities in to achievable tasks, e.g. sequence steps of a cooking a meal; usage of utensils and equipments in a safe manner will adapt the children in to a effective functioning of a home and school environment. d) Discuss any evident facilitators or barriers that impact on the clients’ health and well-being. There can be identifying some barriers which would directly impact on the health and well being of the autistics children. Autism could be regarded as the lifelong disease and it may have some risk factors such as related to the poverty, parental divorce, parental care, living violent neighborhoods and so on. In the first instance limited income of the parents. Thus this study would be a thorough examination about the impact of social disabilities on autistic children. Social, economic and psychological factors would be thoroughly examined in order to apply a more appropriate conceptual and theoretical contingency model/framework. Currently available literature on the conceptual and theoretical contingency models of the autism prevalence and its cause and effect analysis on the society at large is pathetically inadequate. While the degree of convergence/divergence between and among the variables has been metrically presented as higher, there is very little analysis on the related subject of impaired social impairment and lack of intuition and its consequences for the society, the affected individual child and the family. The psychological conceptualization of the autistic behavior of the children also underlines the importance of cognitive societal biases and prejudices to such an extent that independent researchers on the subject hold the common view that community perspectives on autistic behavior have much more than what they show on the surface. For instance family values and poverty have been pilloried as the most powerful endogenous factors with such a greater impact on the potential children’s autistics behavior and thinking. Sociologists have identified the existence of mass poverty pockets in predominantly black neighborhoods in the countries. Thus societal attitudes haven’t undergone the more desirable transformation needed to serve as a catalyst of change on the part of the potential autism. The available literature on societal attitudes towards family values and poverty has amply demonstrated the fact that attitudes in the society towards autism such as aggression, destruction of property and violence in individuals have not been shifting in the right direction. Section 2: Analyze the planned group activity a) Justify the choice of occupation and activity as a therapeutic intervention for the client group to explain why you wanted to run this group. You may wish to refer to an activity analysis included in the appendix. It is expected that this group of autistic children would indulge in cooking as an occupational activity and thus would have a medium to higher chance of productivity and leisure in achieving equilibrium between occupational performance and health related well being. For instance this writer’s groups of clients are expected to achieve a greater degree of occupational performance related success through involvement in a practical activity (Finlay, 2004). Cooking can be an experiment that would allow the clients to occupy themselves in a logical sequence of mini tasks ranging from counting things to mentally determining the impact of heat on what is being cooked. This kind of logical reasoning would necessarily be associated with both productivity and leisure thus producing a well meant equilibrium between emotional response and health related well being. The psychological impact of this type of occupation can be divided into two areas of specialty. a) The autistic child would respond positively to the complexity and the diversity of logical reasoning by using both deductive and inductive reasoning processes. b) Learning outcomes related to the positive correlation between the therapeutic effect and the subsequent calibration of the client’s performance can be represented through a framework of reference to the pre-intervention period and the post-intervention period. These children have now learnt the process of keeping the pan on the cooker, waiting until it heats up and then pouring oil on into the pan. Then they put the vegetables for cooking. This process is an example of deductive reasoning by the autistic children learnt through the process of cooking. Deductive logic works starting from more general things to the more specific things. On the other hand inductive logic works in the opposite direction. Therefore it is possible that the client group of autistic children would be able to achieve a greater degree of success by participating in this program. Autistic children are often withdrawn and lack spontaneous response to environmental stimuli (Case, & Dalley, 1990). For instance my client group has had a similar experience in their previous intervention based activities, and therefore any type of intervention is more likely to have limited success. Despite this drawback I decided to initiate this therapeutic intervention to achieve a fairly representative balance between the contextual occupational performance enhancement, that is cooking while camping and the personal well being of the autistic child. The child would definitely respond to the environmental stimuli such as natural phenomena – wind, rain, sun shine and cold – and task based stimuli - fire, joy, laughter and social interaction. The above mentioned correlation between the therapeutic effect and the subsequent calibration of the client’s performance can be highlighted with specific reference to occupational performance on an individual basis. However the calibration effort can be the most difficult because individual performances might vary as reflected through level of response and individual well being. This is specially so when a particular group is subject to a verity of moral influences. For example a series of denotations and connotations apply to social attitudes. While the autistic child might still prefer to be alone, social intervention might dictate otherwise. b) Briefly discuss how the proposed session would take place for the chosen client group, referring to the group protocol included in the appendix. Learning outcomes apart such environment related causal factors towards behavior alteration would have little or no impact at all if the autistic routinely performs some selected tasks. Against this backdrop cooking as an art therapy could have a far reaching impact on the autistic’s behavior alteration, for example cooking could be regarded as a task that needs both a medium level of concentration and logical reasoning. There can be identifying some in house programs which would include a variety of behavioral and skill-building treatments for the autistic children. Art therapy has been often recommended for the purpose of behavior alteration (Atkins, & Williams, 2007). Art Therapy is one such alternative available to the average children in a formal clinical setting or an informal non-clinical setting. These professionals provide a variety of services in an equally diverse and complex set of circumstances. Their actual practice begins with children whose cognitive abilities permit their direct involvement in art therapy environment. Then there are those adolescents who would also be totally immersed in this environment. Autistic children can be taught to identify the logical steps of a routing activity by using art therapy in exclusive behavior influencing settings such as camping on the outskirts of a city or in the woods (College of Occupational Therapists, 2005). Cooking as an interventionist technique could be used with maximal impact by simultaneously adopting some unorthodox approaches such as taking the client group on camping and telling them how to practice self reliance, e.g. gathering fire woods, making the hearth, and all other improvisations. Thus there are some logical steps of a cooking task to be taught to an autistic child such as choosing vegetables, meats, spices and the sequence of the cooking steps and so on. Provide intervention would help to the child in order to respond to information coming from the senses. Cooking as an intervention may include selecting items, washing, cutting, mixing and other related activities aimed at supporting to an autistic child in order to better manage the senses and body. Facilitate and giving instructions for the cooking activities will improve the interaction and communication with the parents and other family members in the home environment. Cooking as a therapeutic intervention for the autistic children they will improve the skills such as reading, following instructions, measuring, time management, adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing and working together. c) Describe any alterations you have made to grade or adapt the activity or because of the influence of contextual factors on performance in order to specifically meet the needs of your chosen client group. Some of the autistics children in my client group are just on the threshold of autism. Recent research has focused attention on the positive outcomes related to treating autism children by using clinical art therapy (Buchalter, 2009). Culinary therapy in outside places such as camping practices also can be used to treat autistic children with dementia with a degree of success. Those afflicted with dementia cannot verbally express themselves adequately; neither can they recall important incidents with accuracy. Cooking therapy in camping practices is used by mental health professionals to enable dementia children to express physically, cognitively and socially. In the process the camping and culinary therapy utilizes a variety of activities – collecting cooking materials such as fire woods, water, cooking equipments and so on. Thus the use of cooking therapy in camping would enthusiast the autistic children by preventing the repetitive behavior (Contento, 2007). It is a novel experience to the autistic children and it has both an aesthetic appeal and a novel outdoor experience. Autistic children tend to associate outdoor experiences with aesthetic objects such as maple trees and running brooks. Such novelty has a bipolar impact on the child’s space time memory. This particular alteration to the culinary therapeutic activity will be carried out with the intention of enhancing the above mentioned deductive and inductive reasoning processes. Thus this writer expects to achieve a selected segment of learning outcomes and occupational therapeutic objectives that are directly related to the learning outcomes. While independent observations would be made by this writer with singular focus on the positive correlation between out of routine task based activity and unconventional behavioral patterns on the part of autistic children, there would also be some substantial efforts to identify the probable response changes to external stimuli by autistic children. Section 3: Evaluate the team-led session a) Evaluate the planning and execution of your team-run session using a reflective model This emphasis on neuroscience by Hass-Cohen and Carr is not a new phenomenon. If multifarious psychological outcomes in art therapeutic sessions need a cause-and-effect correlation to justify the use of culinary therapy as an Art Therapy in complex social contexts, then there must be an established system of explanation to delineate these diverse and complex processes that underlie the very behavioral dynamism of the individual autistic children. The individual autistic children’s response to these external stimuli is adequately captured by the interaction between neurotransmitters and hormones (Early, 2008). Neurotransmitters in the brain carry messages or indicate the inner response of the individual through surges or subsidence of hormonal activity in the individual. Such behaviors can be mapped out by the art therapist to devise his intervention programs which in turn would lead to positive psychological outcomes through cooking therapy that enables synaptic plasticity in the individual. Psychopathological constraints apart there is a host of other divergences in this process. In the first place neuroscience is used in this approach to find an objective synthesis between the individual children’s response to external stimuli and the subsequent psychological outcomes while the very basis of psychopathology is partially or wholly ignored. There is obviously a very high degree of convergence between art therapy in the clinical context and neuroscience today (Canadian Association of Occupational Therapists (1997; 2002). In fact the modern art therapist adequately takes into account the various psychological dimensions before a diagnosis is done and of course the existing degree of convergence between cooking therapy and other advanced forms of psychotherapy ought to further progress into a final system of study. For instance the blending of neuroscience and cooking therapy has been advocated by many authors as a very desirable outcome in the field. The Allied Health Professions (AHP) in the UK as an organization has put in place a set of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) outcomes that might be regarded as a set of common standards for the allied professions. In fact art therapists are required to use this common model in their professional delivery of services. Psychoanalytical cause-and-effect approach adopted by the art therapist is tentatively a scientific approach to understanding the nature of the autism children and their symptoms while a deeper examination of its antecedents would almost enable the therapist to identify causally relevant factors that have been responsible for the autism. However his/her total and exclusive dependence on art therapeutic techniques to diagnose and treat the subject has not been questioned due to the fact that as outlined in the above CPD model there is very little freedom if any for the art therapist to deviate from the very clinical practice environment. b) Based on your own experience, discuss whether or not this would be an effective intervention in practice for the health and wellbeing of your chosen client group and whether or not in retrospect you would run this session with your chosen client group. What changes might you need to make. Cooking can be identified as an effective therapeutic intervention especially for the prevention of autistic children’s abnormal and repetitive behavior. Thus the cooking therapy would prepare the autistic children for the cooking process which involves choosing and planning the things to be prepared, obtaining cooking ingredients, organizing the particular environment, and carrying out the sequence of cooking steps related to the chosen recipe (Graimes, 2007). Moreover, cooking activity involves the operation of appliances; usage of utensils with safety; and within the time frame; would influence the autistic children to need of the good overall balance of the body as well as the sensory awareness while dealing with hot and sharp objects. Thus cooking therapy would enhance the skills and improve the concentration on the particular activity. Despite the above mentioned positive benefits of the cooking therapy there can be identified some negative aspects as well (Evers, 2006). For instance, if my client group is put in a place of in-house will discourage them to have interaction and better communication with others. And also there can be identified many variations in the therapy because it is basically depending on the type of food prepared by the autistic children. And if the children could not careful about the cooking instructions and could not pay their proper attention on it may leads to a failure of the cooking and it will create the autistic child to a unhappy about the activity. In retrospection I would still run this therapeutic practice for my client group provided that learning outcomes could be influenced partially or wholly by using alternate intervention techniques. For example cooking as an occupational activity for autistic children is just logical but lacks some critical aspects like freedom to decide and Physical mobility. In other words autistic children must be given a greater degree of freedom to decide on their micro activities such as choice of utensils and location. Physical mobility is curtailed to a greater extent in this occupational activity because their freedom to move about is not guaranteed. And as a result autistic children tend to be secluded from the rest of the society while performing this activity (Ewles, & Simnett, 2003). Results can be more positive if they are taken out of their domestic and school environment. Reference 1. Atchison, B & Dirette, D 2006, The Conditions in Occupational Therapy: Effect on Occupational Performance, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, Baltimore. 2. Atkins, S & Williams, LD 2007, Sourcebook in Expressive Arts Therapy, Parkway Publishers, North Carolina. 3. Buchalter, SI 2009, Art Therapy Techniques and Applications: A Model for Practice, Jessica Kingsley Publishers, London. 4. Canadian Association of Occupational Therapists 1997; 2002, Enabling occupation: An occupational therapy perspective, CAOT Publications, Ottawa. 5. Case, C & Dalley, T 1990, Working with Children in Art Therapy, Routledge London 6. Christiansen C & Townsend E 2004, Introduction to Occupation: The Art and Science of Living, Prentice Hall, New Jersey. 7. College of Occupational Therapists 2002, From Interface to Integration: A strategy for modernising occupational therapy services in local health and social care communities, College of Occupational Therapists, London. 8. College of Occupational Therapists 2005, Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct, College of Occupational Therapists, London. 9. Contento, IR 2007, Nutrition Education: Linking Research, Theory, and Practice, Jones & Bartlett Publishers 10. Early, MB 2008, Mental Health Concepts and Techniques for the Occupational Therapy Assistant, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, Baltimore. 11. Evers, CL 2006, How to Teach Nutrition to Kids, 24 Carrot Press, Southern Califormia. 12. Ewles, L & Simnett, I 2003, Promoting health: a practical guide, 5th edn, Balliere Tindall, London. 13. Finlay, L 2004, The Practice of Psychosocial Occupational Therapy, 3rd edn, Nelson Thornes, London. 14. Graimes, N 2007, Kids Fun and Healthy Cookbook, DK CHILDREN, New York. Read More