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Full-Text Articles in Medicine and Health Sciences
Occupational Therapists As Street-Level Bureaucrats: Leveraging The Political Nature Of Everyday Practice., Rebecca M Aldrich, Debbie Rudman
Occupational Therapists As Street-Level Bureaucrats: Leveraging The Political Nature Of Everyday Practice., Rebecca M Aldrich, Debbie Rudman
Occupational Therapy Publications
BACKGROUND.: As front-line service providers who often work in systems regulated by governmental bodies, occupational therapists can be conceptualized as "street-level bureaucrats" ( Lipsky, 1980/2010 ) who effect and are affected by policy.
PURPOSE.: Drawing on understandings from a study of long-term unemployment, this article proposes that occupational therapists, as street-level bureaucrats, respond to inter-related policies and systems in ways that can perpetuate, resist, or transform opportunities for doing and being.
KEY ISSUES.: By highlighting practitioners' everyday negotiation of governmental, organizational, and professional power relations, the notion of street-level bureaucracy illuminates the political nature of practice as well as the …
Expanding Beyond Individualism: Engaging Critical Perspectives On Occupation., Alison J Gerlach, Gail Teachman, Debbie Rudman, Rebecca M Aldrich, Suzanne Huot
Expanding Beyond Individualism: Engaging Critical Perspectives On Occupation., Alison J Gerlach, Gail Teachman, Debbie Rudman, Rebecca M Aldrich, Suzanne Huot
Occupational Therapy Publications
BACKGROUND: Perspectives that individualize occupation are poorly aligned with socially responsive and transformative occupation-focused research, education, and practice. Their predominant use in occupational therapy risks the perpetuation, rather than resolution, of occupational inequities.
AIM: In this paper, we problematize taken-for-granted individualistic analyses of occupation and illustrate how critical theoretical perspectives can reveal the ways in which structural factors beyond an individual's immediate control and environment shape occupational possibilities and occupational engagement.
METHOD: Using a critically reflexive approach, we draw on three distinct qualitative research studies to examine the potential of critical theorizing for expanding beyond a reliance on individualistic analyses …