Contact with the Host Organisation

I finally made contact with the host organisation.  My manager will be Andrew, a Physical Therapist, and he appears to be very organised, eager and enthusiastic person.  So a few more deatils about the project:
* The project will be to design Occupational Therapy training packages for the Physical Therapists and community therapists (the equivalent of allied health assistants or technical officers in Australia) to implement with their client group.
* Simon (the NGO) has an early intervention program and a community rehab program attached to the hospital where I will be based.  There is also a community that Simon built that is for families with children with disability that I hope to become involved in.
* The client base will be mainly children with Cerebral Palsy.  Andrew would also like me to look into therapy modules for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder as this is being identified more.
* The definition of Disability at Simon also includes Stoke, Arthritis and they are not limited with age.  * Accommodation is still unknown as yet, but Andrew is working on it.

Initially, I found the idea that I was not going to be training OT's a little confronting.  Professional pride took over; OT skills are unique to OT and should only be implemented by OT's, what am I doing, am I doing a dis-service to my profession by participating in this project?!  On reflection,  I thought, what do you do when there are no OT's and the organisation wants and see's the benefits of OT, you have to start somewhere.  There is a lot of discussion about trans-disciplinary skills in disability and just maybe it is my job to support this interest in OT and show them how beneficial OT really is, this could be the start of an OT department, Bring it on!

I have a weeks training coming up, so will let you know how that goes...