Occupational therapists are stepping up to the challenge of human rights with hope

Welcome to the second WFOT Bulletin with a human rights theme. Five years have passed since the previous issue in November 2010, and it is interesting to think about what has changed, and what has not. Justice and liberty are as significant in human life as they ever were. Occupational therapists have offered accounts of their work with vulnerable people and communities, understood from a justice perspective. Yet the powers which force a biomedical or other limited way of accounting for occupational therapy continue to exercise control. As practitioners, educators and researchers, we have continued to learn how to enact a justice perspective, to challenge and end dehumanizing practices. Our experiences confirm that emancipatory, enabling approaches are most likely to lead to empowerment.

Members and supporters of the WFOT International Advisory Group for Human Rights have come together in different ways since 2010, enabled by the technological revolution that makes international collaboration so much easier. We have also come together to facilitate joint workshops at national and international occupational therapy conferences, sharing and developing our vision with a large number of people. You too can explore justice issues through local, national and international collaborations, and it is hoped this issue of the Bulletin will inspire you to do so, along with the particular issues and resources of your own setting. Here in the UK, there was a celebration of the Magna Carta within weeks of a new government being elected, a government which has raised the possibility of abolishing the UK Human Rights Act. The Magna Carta was written 800 years ago, by powerful men seeking to limit the power of the ruling king. It had nothing to offer the majority of people who were largely slaves or serfs, whether men, women or children. Chakrabarti (2015) suggested the Magna Carta has symbolic power, being the origin of many subsequent declarations about human rights. The rights for free speech, to protest, and to have a trial have all been won since.

Steps to gain human rights have been incremental, in the same way as an occupational therapist might work, enabling a person to achieve something they may have started out thinking was impossible. The steps you might take as an occupational therapist could be small, but if your direction is inspired by beliefs about the human right to participate in occupation, these steps could be a big part of the overall shift in focus for the profession. You may need to combine different approaches, using your knowledge of current legal rights and demanding they are enacted to benefit the people you work with, while exploring actions which challenge the status quo. This may mean working with those affected by occupational injustice to explore what puts a person in a disadvantaged position (what Freire (1970) calls conscientization) and taking agreed actions, making practice more political or Political.

For example, Debbie has undertaken participatory action research with Pakistani families and their disabled children in the UK, exploring their support needs. They gained confidence and skills to address these needs through formal and informal support systems. Currently she is using action research to engage Pakistani occupational therapists and teachers to develop more effective inclusive education, with the goal to enable more children with special needs to access education, and improve the quality of education for all children.

Wendy has been redesigning occupational therapy pre-registration education at the University of Essex, in an inward process of reflection and an outward process of collaboration. Many students recognize from the start how to address injustice: the challenge is how to keep that recognition central within services which often dehumanize people (service users and staff) in order to manage them. William Morris suggested that it was hope that distinguished good work and bad. Occupations with sufficient “hope of rest, hope of product, hope of pleasure” benefit everyone in a community (Morris, 1888/2008). Imagine using these hopes to reflect on your own occupations and those of the people you work with. What difference could this idea make? There are other interesting examples of practice and theory in the following pages and we hope this edition of the Bulletin inspires you to consider how your practice could become more rights-based.