Elderly

This framework aims to assist occupational therapists in describing aspects of work functioning in work assessments on different situations. There are three separate dimensions of work functioning. Dimension 1 is work participation and society. Work participation is an individual’s ability and opportunity he/she has, to acquire and maintain a work position in the society, and to fulfill a worker role. The complex interaction between personal, environmental, and temporal factors affects a person’s work participation.

The three-phase framework helps to view the life resuming process of people who suffer from long-term disabilities such as stroke, traumatic brain injury, and whiplash, and to provide the right intervention at the right time. In this framework, the reestablishment of previous role(s) of the clients and/or the development of a new role are the most important. The role achievement is believed to be the primary goal of therapy intervention for people with long-term disabilities. The three phases are included as named for this framework.

The Person-Environment-Occupation-Performance (PEOP) model is a system model that views the function in the systems a whole and considers the interaction among its components.

The Occupational Performance Process Model is based on the concepts of occupation and client-centered practice; that is, therapists should solve the clients’ occupational performance problems through the client-centered approach. To facilitate clinical decision-making in this model, the first stage is to name, validate, and prioritize occupational performance issues through collaboration with the clients. The Canadian Occupational Performance Measure is an assessment that can be used to identify the clients’ perception of problems and importance in their life.

The Occupational Therapy Intervention Process Model is a model that guides therapists to use top-down, client-centered, and occupational-based approaches to assessment and intervention. In this model, assessment begins with an initial referral or a chart review. Therapists then meet and have an interview with clients in order to build the client-centered performance context and to gather relevant information and identify the clients’ goals. Next, a top-down approach is used to evaluate the situation with considerations of the clients’ diagnosed conditions.

Model of Occupational Spin-Off is a model that describes occupational engagement as a mean to mental health. This model identifies environment as a place, occupation as the achievement, and person as the one to choose and engage in activities as a mean to achieve mental well-being. In the model, four levels of occupational engagements are identified. The first level is affirmation in social environment, indicating that person can find affirmation from social environment when the environment provides a sense of “being, belonging, and becoming” for the person.

The model of occupational empowerment explicates how living in a disempowering environment can lead to a person’s maladaptive habits and unhealthy living. A disempowering environment includes unfavorable circumstances and problems such as poverty, substance abuse, physical abuse, violence, limited social support, etc. Living in the disempowering environment may lead to problematic factors such as homelessness, joblessness, limited educational opportunities, which further lead to occupational deprivation.

The model of social interaction (MSI) is designed for occupational therapists to guide practice in social interactions within the context of activities of self-care, work, and play/leisure. It views individuals as an open system, who are influenced by actions and events within a variety of social and cultural environments, through a process of intake, throughput, output, and feedback. Each person’s internal makeup consists of three hierarchically arranged systems, including volition, habituation, and social performance.

The Lived Environment Life Quality Model (LELQ) aims to explicate the ecological complexities in using occupations to optimize quality of life of institutionalized people with dementia. This model focuses on factors that affect clients’ opportunity in occupational engagement, mainly on the social and physical environmental supports and barriers. It has two main domains, including the lived-environment domain (specifically for assessment and intervention) and the Quality of Life (QoL) domain (specifically for intervention goals and outcome).

Kawa model is a model that uses the metaphor of a river with different contextual elements to represent human life. The key features of Kawa model include water, river sidewall and bottom, rocks, driftwood, and space between obstructions. Water represents a client’s life flow or life energy. River sidewall and bottom reflects a client’s physical and social contexts which are inseparable with the water flow. Rocks represent the problems or difficult situations that hinder smooth water flow and they are usually difficult to remove.