Social influences on primary health care occupational therapy

Abstract

Social location refers to how individuals are situated within historical, structural and institutional processes and practices. It recognizes that race, culture, socio-economic status, disability and other social factors grant and deny groups certain privileges and advantages, resulting in their unequal positioning on the socio-economic hierarchy. Despite the fact that an awareness of social location better prepares occupational therapists for collaborating with those whose backgrounds differ from their own, the occupational therapy literature, to date, offers very little guidance for addressing social location. This paper reflects on a School of Occupational Therapy partnership with a primary health care community health centre to develop a business proposal in order to secure funding for an occupational therapist. School representatives engaged in self-reflexive practice and looked to the literature to make sense of their position as middle-class white women working with a low socio-economic status (SES) community that is comprised of more than half black, First Nations and immigrant residents. Based on the experience of this partnership to date, the report offers some guidelines for integrating knowledge on social location into occupational therapy practice.