National Award for Occupational Therapy Support Worker at Ballington House!

Sara Norman, Therapy Support Worker at Ballington House in Leek has been awarded the VdTMoCAF (UK) Award for Occupational Therapy Support Workers 2016.

This award is for occupational therapy support workers that have been nominated by qualified and unqualified colleagues to receive recognition for making a significant contribution to developing the use of the VdT Model of Creative Ability within their clinical work setting.

Sarah Pritchard Occupational Therapist at Ballington House nominated Sara for the award after having seeing Sara use the VdT model to appropriately grade activities for patients and seeing that progress can be measured in many ways. Sarah said: “An example of Sara’s engagement with the model has been facilitating group work and preparing craft activities taking into account of the different VdT MoCA levels. We developed a knitting activity and pom-pom making group for the patient group at Ballington House as a way to make everyone feel included- the two activities came together in making Innocent smoothie hats for charity.”

Mandy Leadbetter, Hospital Manager at Ballington House added to this “We saw Sara’s potential when she was a Healthcare Support Worker. She goes the extra mile and always gives 110%.”

The award is for £100 to be put towards professional development in delivering occupational therapy through the VdTMoCA model. As a result Sara now plans to go to London on Part One of the VdT MoCA course which will give her greater knowledge and understanding of the skills and tools that she has already been taught by the Occupational Therapist at Ballington House. The VdT MoCA course will develop Sara’s knowledge by enabling her to:

• have a basic understanding of creative ability

• have adequate information in order to commence assessment of creative ability

• be familiar with the concept of phases of performance within levels of creative ability

• be able to explain how to select activities for intervention and how they may be graded

• understand the importance of structuring and presenting activity in order to meet therapy aims

• be able to demonstrate application of the treatment principles to a role play treatment session and self-evaluate his/her clinical reasoning

On winning the award Sara commented “I was totally shocked to have won the award, I knew Sarah had nominated me, but I never thought I would win! I am looking forward to building on the foundations of what Sarah has taught me, and expanding the skills I can bring to Ballington House in order to support our patients in the best way for their personal needs.”

Congratulations Sara on your achievement!