UNITING PRACTICE AND THEORY IN AN OCCUPATIONAL FRAMEWORK - 1998 ELEANOR-CLARKE-SLAGLE-LECTURE

The term occupation conveys the powerful essence of our profession-ena bling people to seize, take possession of, or occupy the spaces, time, and roles of their lives. Occupation is activity that is both purpose ful and meaningful to the person who engages in it. Our uniqueness Ges in our use of occupation as a therapeutic agent but our unique focus on occupation ir not always apparent in practice. Four global groups o f activities that occupational therapy practitioners use in practice a re described-exercise, contrived occupation, therapeutic occupation, a nd adaptive occupation. Therapeutic occupation and adaptive occupation are proposed as the legitimate activities of occupational therapy The Occupational Therapy Intervention Process Model is then presented. Th is model stresses a top-down approach to evaluation and provides a fra mework for implementing adaptive occupation for purposes of compensati on as well as therapeutic occupation far purposes of remediation.