OT Week and The Impact of COVID-19: Becci Emery - Children’s Services

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected us all in ways we couldn’t have imagined back when the first lockdown started in March. Over that last 7-8 months, we have all come together as a community to learn how to adapt and to cope with the stresses that the virus has put onto our everyday ‘normal’ lives.

As we adjust into the ‘new normal’ (again), and to mark the start of OT Week, I, along with my expert OT team at Julie Jennings and Associates, have reflected on how the Coronavirus pandemic has affected our work, and what we are doing to make sure we continue providing our vital services safely to those who need it most.

Across OT Week we will be highlighting each of the individual roles we undertake, to give a broader picture of life as an OT during the pandemic.

Name: Becci Emery

Area of work: I am currently working in a Local Authority Integrated Disabled Children’s Service in Derby.

Background experience: Adult’s Social Care and Children’s Services, including housing adaptations and community equipment for the long term disabled.

Impact of COVID-19 on working practice or your personal perspective

I was in the process of changing jobs as the country went into a national lockdown at the end of March. Prior to this I had been working in the Nottinghamshire Integrated Community Equipment Loans Service as a Senior Practitioner OT across the Equipment Reviewing Team and the Clinical Team for 18 months, but felt ready for a change as I missed the contact with the public and felt I was becoming slightly de-skilled. The opportunity for the Senior Practitioner post in my current team came along in December 2019 and I was finally ready to start in March 2020. After a week of working from home in my old job, which I used to tidy up some loose ends, followed by some annual leave to use up, I stated my new job on 30 March.

I called in to the council offices on day 1 to collect a laptop and mobile phone and that was it -  no induction, no shadowing, no face to face introductions to my work colleagues, and definitely no home visits. Instead, there was a lot of Skyping, Teams meetings, reading policies and online trainings; including COVID risk assessments and donning/doffing PPE.

As schools and universities closed, the house became full of people. My husband is a teacher, my younger son was doing his A-levels and my older son started accessing his university lectures at home. In addition, my daughter and son-in-law had to leave Australia and moved back in with us. It suddenly became hard to get somewhere quiet at home to work.

Your OT perspective and what you can do to positive influence challenges imposed by the pandemic

During the toughest times of lockdown, when families needed more support, it was frustrating for the team to see them at their most vulnerable and not being able to reach out to them and offer them practical solutions face to face.

Ultimately,  we had to change our approach to problem-solving, assessing the need remotely and analysing the situation from afar based on information gathered through  a range of social media outlets or phone conversations in order to offer a satisfactory solution and meet the expectations of the families in need.

I had a family sending video footage of a child in a hoist to advise on how to safely lower him into a chair. I had a mother sending me measurements of her daughter who needed a new sling as she had outgrown her old one, and I sent links and you-tube videos of companies for parents to view beds and adjustable height baths.

Your commitments to support the recovery of People that have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic

Since the restrictions began to be lifted in July, it was agreed that visits could be undertaken where this was necessary. This was done with caution, by wearing PPE and distancing as much as possible and even conducting as much of the visit as possible outside.

However, the restriction on visiting families has resulted in a backlog which has now impacted upon my workload and caused delays in the service delivery. I now feel that I am just playing catch up with my families and the visits feel like a ticking boxes exercise rather than it being a purposeful and therapeutic intervention and a meaningful relationship with the children and parents.

I am trying to address this by continuing to use technology as a means of keeping families informed of options for solutions to meet the identified needs. I am hoping that the outcome of this will be that families still feel empowered to be involved in decision-making in spite of the lack of face to face contact and that this remains the case as we continue to  maintain some restrictions. In the longer term, however, as we recover from the pandemic and the way we communicate with the family without the restrictions is resumed, I will still consider using social media as a means of demonstrating, assessing and gathering information to support problem solving and solution-focused practice. This has been used successfully to this end throughout the pandemic and can be applied to many situations going forward, saving the time and costs to companies as well as to the team and thus ultimately public money.

With the experience of lockdown, my confidence in using IT skills has improved, and I feel I will be more prepared to meet the challenges in my working practice that the pandemic brought with it if face to face contact becomes difficult again.