School OT: Using the Kawa Model and Five Ways to Wellbeing

A retrospective piece, sharing an intervention idea from an occupational therapy placement

I was given the chance to work with a UK mental health charity, supporting young people in a variety of role-emerging OT settings. Experiences included designing and facilitating group sessions on resilience, to a secondary school for deaf and hard-of-hearing children. I know from experience how stressful teenage life can be, but communication and engagement with the wider social environment is clearly an additional barrier for this community.

Frankie and I, on our final OT placement

Although a sign-language facilitator was present, this provided an extra layer of challenge, as I'm sure you can imagine. Frankie and I were keen to rise to this and we loved our time at the school.

We brought the Five Ways to Wellbeing to pupils, via a variety of weekly classes. These were designed to be fun, engaging and mindful of the stressors faced - both by those with hearing impairments and by teenagers in general.

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