2024 A Focus on…Establishing your Career

An arm’s length project of the Elizabeth Casson Trust exploring diversity, inclusion and equity within the profession.

Our third event: A Focus on…Establishing Your Career

Third in our Focus On… series was a Focus on… Establishing your Career held on 10 January 2024.

Participants came from the NHS social care, RCOT, various universities and each of the OT affinity groups: AbleOTUK, BAMEOTUK, and LGBTQIA+OT. Carers were also an important group included for this event. Attendees considered what support minoritised occupational therapists may need as they move into the more specialist stages of their careers.

The event was convened by Toks Odutayo and Venus Madden (Associate Director of Allied Health Professionals, Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust) delivered the keynote talk. The event was described as ‘invaluable, inspiring, uplifting and encouraging’ (participant feedback).

In this event, we discussed:

Mechanisms that facilitate belonging within a team
Creating an environment that encourages opportunity and professional growth
Supporting professional fulfilment and wellbeing

Following discussion, each facilitator fed back their preferred two ideas for action, and these were then voted on during the event to identify the top priorities to take forward. Each attendee could vote for three actions.

What happened next?

Our most popular projects included:

A ‘showcase’ of OT lived experience, which shares emotion and the impact of highs and lows of establishing a career
Co-create a toolkit for organisations with a checklist to assess maturity level, a charter that everyone signs up to and practical strategies to support staff
Create advice/mechanisms for the creation of genuine safe spaces that have a 360-degree view/input from all – how to create, develop and maintain them
A manager/leader ‘how to guide’ with co-produced Charters to guide enabling fulfilment and wellbeing of workforce and a ‘test-bed’ of encouraging its use
Provide funding to create and implement a model for spaces to foster belonging in a team – the ‘how to’. Blueprint this so it can be scaled

As before, the Observatory team explored how to commission projects that will address priorities and requested funding for these projects from the Elizabeth Casson Trust. We see extensive overlap among these priorities, so some projects may be combined.

The following projects are underway:

i/ Professor Lisa Taylor (Elizabeth Casson Fellow) is encompassing the stories and perspectives of occupational therapists within her project, EachOT.

We hope this will give insight into the highs and lows that an individual might have within their career and inspire all occupational therapists. To read more about the project, please access the link below:

The Employability And Career Hub for Occupational Therapists (EACHOT): Doing, Being and Becoming my best self – Elizabeth Casson Trust

ii/ A compendium of inclusivity best practice.

This will include case studies and ‘top tips’ on five or six areas of the employee lifecycle. This work will be completed by human resource consultants Caroline Waters OBE and Helen Chipchase, who both specialise in diversity and inclusivity at work. This work is still in its early conceptualisation phases and is not due to be complete until early 2025.

iii/ Disseminating the work that we have produced more widely beyond the occupational therapy profession.

We believe that this could not only increase the audience of our work but also encourage other professions to undertake and implement similar projects and translate them into different professional contexts.