Scientific Program - Keynote Presentation

Elizabeth Townsend, Ph.D., O.T.(C), Reg.N.S., FCAOT

Biography

Professor and Director, School of Occupational Therapy, Faculty of Health Professions, Dalhousie University, Cross-Appointed in the School of Nursing, and Department of Community Health and Epidemiology

Dr. Townsend is one of four founding faculty who moved to Nova Scotia to start the only School of Occupational Therapy on Canada’s East Coast in 1982. She came to academic life following 15 years of broad experience as an occupational therapist in clinical, management, and program development practices with children, adults, and seniors. She has worked in rehabilitation, home care, and community mental health settings from Uganda, East Africa to the Canadian provinces of Newfoundland, Alberta, Ontario, Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia. Her research and teaching are to advance occupational therapy’s social vision, now described as enabling occupational justice. Her resume includes 70 peer reviewed publications, including 7 books and 2 workbooks, plus almost 200 invited or peer adjudicated presentations around the world.

Liz is excited to returning to OT Australia nine years after her 1999 Keynote presentation on Enabling Occupation in the 21st Century in Canberra. The 2008 theme of Creating the Future calls us to inspire, explore and take action. Her Keynote entitled Let’s Go Public in Enabling Occupational Justice will inspire us, and explore how we as a profession can take action in creating a future for societies worldwide and for occupational therapy as a profession. The Keynote will be interwoven around Canada’s newest guidelines, Enabling Occupation II: Advancing an Occupational Therapy Vision of Health, Well-Being and Justice, Through Occupation, published and launched by the Canadian Association of Occupational Therapists in 2007. This is a watershed publication to herald a new era of occupational enablement. Like the book, which Dr. Townsend co-authored with Dr. Helene Polatajko and over 60 Canadian contributing authors, the Keynote honours our past, affirms our present, and profiles a future for occupational therapy that is focused on occupation-based enablement.

Presentation Title
Let’s Go Public in Enabling Occupational Justice

Summary:
I have a dream – to quote Martin Luther King. In it, everyone in the world knows about the idea of enabling occupational justice. Australian and the world leaders, some of whom have an occupation-based education, continue the work of resolving crises and building civic societies – reducing persistent violence and occupational disasters that strain the mental health of everyone worldwide, reducing costs to engage youth, adults and our aging populations in meaningful occupations, and cleaning up our environment to produce the healthy food and water that are necessary to control obesity and chronic diseases. Leaders with occupation-based education organize policy, funding and legal supports to manage inclusive, life-affirming, justice-oriented, occupation-based practices, one of which is occupational therapy. Working with populations, organizations, communities, groups, families – and where necessary with individuals – are occupational managers, occupational counselors, occupational policy makers, occupation-based researchers, and occupational therapists. My dream is that the citizens of the world are all engaged in enabling occupational justice – acting locally and thinking globally.

Dr. Townsend’s 2008 Keynote will inspire occupational therapists and others to Go Public with our interests and expertise in occupation as a foundation for daily living and human existence. She will explore her 40 year journey as an occupational therapist, extend her 1993 Muriel Driver Lecture in Canada on Occupational Therapy’s Social Vision, and interweave her 25 year participation in developing Canadian guidelines for client-centred, occupation-based practice, including her authorship of Canada’s 2007 guidelines, Enabling Occupation II: Advancing an Occupational Therapy Vision of Health, Well-Being and Justice, Through Occupation. Let’s Go Public in Enabling Occupational Justice proposes action using a participatory occupational justice framework to create the future for her dream of an occupationally-just world.

Alison Nelson

Biography

Alison Nelson has been blessed with meeting and working with many amazing Indigenous Australians who have inspired and challenged her. When she was 7, she had the privilege of having a traditional Aboriginal man from Pitjandjarra lands come and stay with her family and this had a significant influence on her.

Alison graduated from the University of Queensland in 1991. She has worked in rural coastal areas in Queensland and NSW as well as hospital and community settings in Brisbane. In 2000, Alison completed her Research Masters in Occupational Therapy during which she established a visiting occupational therapy service to several Brisbane schools and pre-schools where there were large numbers of Indigenous Australian students.

Following this, Alison established an occupational therapy service in partnership with an independent Indigenous school in Brisbane where she has worked for the past 11 years. The service incorporates clinical education of occupational therapy students and a variety of occupational therapy approaches at individual and whole-class levels. For the past 2 years Alison has also been enrolled in a PhD through the School of Human Movement Studies at the University of Queensland in which she is exploring the place and meaning of health and  physical activity in the lives of urban Indigenous young people. Alison has published several papers on her work with Indigenous children and their families. As a white Australian woman, Alison is constantly learning about her place in Australia.

Presentation Title
Learning from the past, looking to Future: Exploring our place with Indigenous Australians.

Summary:
This presentation will address each of the key themes “to inspire, to explore and to take action” in an effort to see how we as occupational therapists can participate in enabling a different and better future for all Australians. In doing so, it is necessary to explore our history and our cultures, both individually and collectively as a profession and to understand the ways in which these shape who we are and what we do. As occupational therapists we have valuable knowledges and skills which have the potential to contribute in a positive way to the health and educational outcomes of Indigenous Australians. As a profession operating in Australia, we also have a responsibility to reach this potential. This presentation aims to help us be aware of what these contributions could be and to provide practical and culturally safe ways in which we can take action.