Leeds Beckett University - City Campus,
Woodhouse Lane,
LS1 3HE
Event to highlight occupational therapy support for Leeds’s homeless population
The pilot Occupational Therapy service, funded by NHS Leeds South and East Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) with support from Leeds Community Foundation, adopts a client-centred approach to promote positive health and wellbeing within St George’s Crypt’s service users.
Occupational Therapy (OT) enables people to participate in daily life to improve their health and wellbeing. Daily life is made up of many meaningful occupations, such as looking after ourselves, cooking a meal, engaging in hobbies or working. An occupational therapist provides support and advice if people are unable to engage in their occupations due to illness, disability, age or circumstances.
It is envisaged that in delivering a clinical service at the main point of client service access, St George’s Crypt can improve health and wellbeing by intervening before non-threatening ailments degrade into serious conditions and require more acute and costly medical interventions.
The sharing event will take place on Thursday 13 October, from 11am to 2pm, at St George’s Conference Centre, Great George Street, Leeds. It will be an opportunity for guests to learn more about the partnership from St. George’s Crypt staff and partners involved in the development and delivery of the project. Presenters will include Mandy Graham, Senior Lecturer in Occupational Therapy at Leeds Beckett who is supporting the set-up and delivery of the project; Pip Goff, Programmes Manager at Leeds Community Foundation (LCF), and Rebecca Wint, the Occupational Therapist at St George’s Crypt. Presentations will be followed by a networking lunch.
Andrew Omond, Project Manager at St George’s Crypt who will be introducing the event, explained: “The service has been running for six months now and has really developed the level of support we can deliver to our clients – it’s really important working with chaotic lives to be accommodating, flexible and on-hand and that is just what this service is. Rebecca Wint, our Occupational Therapist, does a brilliant job not only caring and supporting our clients’ occupational needs but also collecting data to prove the worth of occupational therapy delivered in a community setting.”
Karl Witty, Team Lead for Community Partnerships at Leeds Beckett, said: “The pilot Occupational Therapy service at the Crypt provides a clear example of how cross sector partnership working can help the city achieve its ambition of being the best city for health and wellbeing, providing new opportunities for innovation and the sharing of learning.”
All are welcome to the event, which will be of particular interest to occupational therapists and other health professionals who work, or would like to work, in diverse and emerging areas of practice; and also to local service leaders who are interested in linking with the new service. You can also join in on the event on Twitter through the hashtag #CryptOT.
Students at Leeds Beckett, led by Marie Kerr, Senior Lecturer at Leeds Business School, have provided a financial cost benefit analysis for the project; whilst academics within the University’s Centre for Health Promotion, Dr James Woodall and Susan Coan, are carrying out a project evaluation, analysing the financial report alongside the service statistics gathered by St George’s Crypts to build a case for the long-term provision of the service.