Parenting roles and occupations are complex and become even more challenging when navigated with a physical disability. Physical, social, and political barriers are among many factors that shape experiences in parenting and disability. Occupational therapy practitioners (OTPs), with their holistic and client-centered approach, are ideally positioned to provide professional support to alleviate or adapt to environmental barriers. However, OTPs confront their own barriers to providing services, including a deficit in and accessibility to occupation therapy-specific resources and education on disability and parenting. These factors together result in a gap in service between disabled parents and occupational therapy.
This doctoral manuscript offers a potential solution to these issues in the form of Adapting Parenthood, an online resource and education platform for OTPs. The platform is designed to provide occupational therapy specific professional education for practitioners working with parents who experience barriers in their parenting roles due to disability or related factors.
Adapting Parenthood offers a user-friendly, digital interface that allows users to navigate at their own pace, fostering autonomy, and learning motivation. It incorporates a range of multimedia resources, catering to various learning styles and preferences, to enhance user engagement and information retention.
The platform is organized into topic areas comprised of resources and educational modules. The resources include a diverse range of documents, manuals, recommendations, and legal information intended to supplement interventions and enhance the practice of healthcare professionals. The educational modules focus on topic areas where practitioners may need to refine their skills and knowledge when working with parents with physical disabilities. These topics include adapting parenting occupations, home modification and universal design, as well as disability-affirming education on interdependence, social support, and disability rights related to parenting.
The content and design of Adapting Parenthood underscores the importance of disability-affirming practice. It emphasizes understanding the unique lived experiences of disabled individuals, particularly those who are parents, and the development of support that mitigate and alleviate the challenges they face. Ultimately, this dissertation provides an in-depth analysis of the unique challenges faced by parents with physical disabilities and proposes a comprehensive online platform to support and educate OTPs working with this population. Adapting Parenthood aims to bridge the service gap and foster a more inclusive and supportive environment for disabled parents.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bu.edu/oai:open.bu.edu:2144/46604 |
| Date | 24 August 2023 |
| Creators | Peterson, Jessica Nicole |
| Contributors | Duddy, Karen, Jacobs, Karen |
| Source Sets | Boston University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
| Rights | Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ |
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