Opportunity to share your opinions and reflections about School-Based Rehabilitation Services

February 17, 2022

What is the opportunity?

To share your opinions and reflections about School-Based Rehabilitation Services via participation on a project steering committee with researchers from CanChild Centre for Childhood Disability Research at McMaster University, and representatives of Children’s Treatment Centres (CTCs) and School Boards. We would appreciate learning and hearing from families about their experiences.

The steering committee will meet virtually, every second month, for one hour to provide oversight for a research study of the Partnering for Change (P4C) occupational therapy service. This research is funded by the Ontario Ministry of Children, Community, and Social Services (MCCSS).

What is Partnering for Change?
Partnering for Change (P4C) is a way for occupational therapists to provide services for children at school. In P4C, the occupational therapist is assigned to a school and provides regular and consistent services that support the entire school community. Services are offered in three tiers or levels. Universal Tier One services help all children, targeted Tier Two services support children who need some additional help, and intensive Tier Three services support children with more complex needs. Past studies of P4C found that the model eliminates waitlists for service, enables more efficient care, supports equitable access to occupational therapy, reaches more children, builds capacity among families and educators, and successfully meets children’s needs.

What is our study about?
Members of our research team developed P4C more than 10 years ago, and many studies show its positive impacts. Now, we need to understand how, when, why, and who benefits from this service so that we can optimize delivery of P4C. In this study, our research team at CanChild is partnering with CTCs and School Boards to identify and describe the circumstances in which P4C works best, for whom P4C works successfully, and how and why the service achieves optimal outcomes.

By studying the P4C service in different school communities, we can help the government, schools, and health care agencies to determine how to apply this service across the province. To make sure that we can do our study well, we are first "piloting" and testing our study procedures. This will ensure that our plans for completing a larger study are feasible and work well. If everything works as planned with our pilot study, we intend to secure funding to study the P4C service for two more school years.

What is the potential impact of this study?
We will use the findings to support CTCs and School Boards to optimize P4C for their unique setting and develop a “roadmap” of detailed guidelines, recommendations, and practical tools for implementation of P4C across Ontario.

What is required of you?
We are currently seeking your participation on the P4C Realist Evaluation Steering Committee that will meet bi-monthly, virtually, for one hour. If, as planned, our study continues beyond this school year, we would continue our research activities including our steering committee for two more school years.

Please contact Dr. Wenonah Campbell, Project Principal Investigator at campbelw@mcmaster.ca or Leah Dix, Project Manager at dixlm@mcmaster.ca.

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CanChild
1400 Main Street West, IAHS 408
Hamilton, ON. Canada L8S 1C7
Email: canchild@mcmaster.ca
Website: www.canchild.ca