Canadian Journal of Occupational Therapy

Students with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) have been found to participate less in school-based activities.

This study aimed to examine the effectiveness of a combined in-service and collaborative consultation intervention model for enhancing classroom participation of students with IDD.

The Collaborative Consultation for Participation of Students With IDD (Co-PID) program involved a multidisciplinary team (an occupational therapist and 17 teachers) as well as 35 students and was compared to an in-service program (20 teachers and 34 students). Students were 8 to 20 years old. The programs aimed to enhance three classroom participation components: communicating, choosing, and initiating.

The Co-PID was found to significantly improve students’ participation in all areas, whereas the participation of the students in the in-service group decreased.

A school-based multidisciplinary intervention program for students with IDD, combining in-service and collaborative consultation (e.g., Co-PID), may assist in enhancing classroom participation among students with IDD.

Stroke is the leading cause of long-term disability. Stroke survivors seldom improve their upper-limb function when their deficit is severe, despite recently developed therapies.

This study aims to assess the efficacy of functional electrical stimulation therapy in improving voluntary reaching and grasping after severe hemiplegia.

A post hoc analysis of a previously completed randomized control trial (clinicaltrials.gov, No. NCT00221078) was carried out involving 21 participants with severe upper-limb hemiplegia (i.e., Fugl-Meyer Assessment–Upper Extremity [FMA-UE] ≤ 15) resulting from stroke.

Functional Independence Measure Self-Care subscores increased 22.8 (±6.7) points in the intervention group and 9 (±6.5) in the control group, following 40 hr of equal-intensity therapy. FMA-UE score changes were 27.2 (±13.5) and 5.3 (±11.0) for the intervention and control groups, respectively.

The results may represent the largest upper-limb function improvements in any stroke population to date, especially in those with severe upper-limb deficit.

Persons experiencing or at risk of homelessness have occupational needs that are seldom addressed in the Canadian system of care. The lack of documented evidence on occupational therapy practices in this field hinders the development of the profession.

This article identifies current and potential practices that aim to enable or support the occupations of persons experiencing or at risk of homelessness.

A scoping review was conducted, including evidence from both occupational therapy and non–occupational therapy sources.

One hundred and seventy-eight papers were selected in the areas of occupational performance skills training, enrichment of occupational repertoire, employment/education, physical rehabilitation services, child/family services, community building, occupational transition from homeless to housed, literacy, and disaster relief.

Occupational therapists can build environments and create opportunities that facilitate occupational engagement of individuals experiencing homelessness. Gaps in knowledge include the evaluation of occupational therapy practices, the Canadian context of family homelessness, and the cultural safety of occupational therapy interventions.

Youth concussion and its subsequent recovery have been described as heterogeneous; no one injury is the same, and each youth is different in how he or she recovers.

This paper proposes a theoretical perspective on the management of youth with persistent concussion symptoms.

When managing concussion within youth, further consideration of person, occupation, and environment factors may provide insight on (a) the differential spectrum of profiles that exist among youth who have experienced a concussion and (b) how these profiles can support client-centred rehabilitation. Passive-dove and active-hawk stress profiles from evolutionary literature will be used to contextualize return to occupational performance. An innovative, novel model—the Dove-Hawk Model of Allostatic Load for Youth With Persistent Concussion Symptoms—is proposed to illustrate these concepts, and approaches to rehabilitation across the spectrum of profiles are offered.

Viewing persistent youth concussion recovery in this way may elucidate different approaches to client-centred rehabilitation.

Spinal cord injury (SCI) is a complex medical condition that can be difficult to monitor.

This study aimed to establish a common set of validated outcome measures specifically for SCI clinical practice.

In a three-round online Delphi process, experts in SCI care across Canada suggested and ranked outcome measures for clinical practice. The facilitators provided feedback between rounds and determined if consensus (at least 75% agreement) was reached on a single outcome measure per clinical area.

One hundred and forty-eight outcome measures were initially considered for inclusion. After three rounds, consensus was reached for 23 out of 30 clinical areas. In the remaining seven, more than one outcome measure was recommended. The final toolkit comprises 33 outcome measures with sufficient measurement properties for use with a SCI population.

An outcome measures toolkit validated specifically for SCI should lead to improved identification of best practice and enable clinicians to monitor client progress effectively.