On 9th March 2023 CMHL hosted a full day workshop on Occupational Formulation and Goal Setting facilitated by Lorrae Mynard and Dani Ashley from Forensicare. The workshop was attended by over 120 Occupational Therapists working in AMHS around the state.
Lorrae and Dani facilitated an engaging and interactive space where participants learnt new skills in occupational formulation and goal setting and had the opportunity to apply those skills in practice. Participants supported each other in the learning by sharing their formulations and getting peer feedback in small breakout spaces. The workshop also covered learnings from the implementation process at Forensicare where Lorrae has been completing her PhD in Occupational Formulation.
This training was first run on 1st September in 2022 which also had over 120 OTs, which means that over 240 OTs in public mental health in Victoria are now trained in Occupational Formulation! We will be running this training again in August 2023 (CMHL AMHS calendar) as there continues to be a high demand from OTs to learn Occupational Formulation.
It is understandable that this training is in high demand as Occupational Formulation is a practice that helps OTs to do what they do best – work alongside people to help them do what they want and need to do in their daily life. An occupational formulation sums up a person’s experiences of participating in everyday life, bringing together information from assessments and discussion with the person and other people involved in their life. It includes consideration of the persons Occupational identity, describing who the person is and what they want to be or do. Occupational competence which outlines how they go with daily life activities and doing the things they want to do or need to do within their environment and their Occupational needs which are the things they want to focus on and are used to develop and work toward goals. (Mynard & Forensicare OT team, 2022).
CMHL and Forensicare recognise that shifting practice takes time and extra support beyond one day training events. To ensure that the learnings from the training are translated into practice change CMHL have further partnered with Forensicare to provide Community of Practice meetings every 6 weeks for OTs who have been identified as Occupational Formulation Implementation Leads for their service. The first meeting of the CoP was held on 15th March 2023, one week after the training session and provided a space for reflection, exploration, agreement and commitment on how services can support OTs who have attended the training and support each other in the implementation process.
CMHL would like to thank the team at Forensicare for being so generous in sharing their knowledge and expertise to support and transform the practice of OTs across the state.
