Stage I. Initiating Intervention
Initiating intervention entails establishing and building relationships with stakeholders (marginalized groups and individuals; policy makers) and developing an understanding of the contexts. The purpose of building relationships and developing understanding is to define the needs in partnership with community members and then negotiate with them regarding which needs will be focused on first. This involves developing a mutual understanding.
-
Establishing and building relationships (Taylor et al., 2005)
Relationships are established and built through developing deep understanding of the social and occupational identities and occupational profiles operant within the target community. Through building mutual understanding of the issues to be addressed and goals of intervention, the intervention is strengthened.
Developing an understanding of:
(a) The group of people and the occupations that they engage in
- Build a mutual understanding of the context and identify the occupations of groups and sub-groups within the community.
- Analyse the actual occupations engaged in
- Identify the dominant and alternate ideologies informing the participation in occupations. This investigation should answer: What are the common and dominant mindsets about occupations, occupational performance and what is expected to be done in this community.
- Identify how the structural factors (such as cultural factors, social, economic factors) shape the performance and selection of occupations
(b) Identify foregone occupations and how this shapes current engagement
Here the practitioner has to identify what is missing from the range and type of occupations that individuals and the community usually participate in. To do this the following should be investigated:- The factors contributing to why the opportunities to participate in diverse occupations may have been skipped over by the marginalized group.
- Coherence or disjunctures between occupations that individuals participate in and the opportunities and patterns of occupations in that community.
- Recognize the value associated with the form and function of occupations in the community in its present form. Consider how this will be infused into the intervention – test ideas related to this with the target group
(c) Identify potential for further occupational engagement The insights gained about the group's occupational profile should be contrasted with the potential for occupational engagement in this community.
The way in which the relationship is established should be such that equity is applied and power dynamics are respected. Complete a refer back to context related assessment using an Action Learning approach (Taylor et al., 2005) and applying the following techniques to generate data.
- Interviewing using productive inquiry and research skills (Plummer, 2001)
- Macro analysis of context
- Observation (LeCompte & Preissle, 1993)
- Photovoice methods (Wang, Morrel-Samuels, Hutchison, Bell, & Pestronk, 2004)
- Participating in occupations with people and reflecting on what is learnt
- Productive inquiry (Senge, 2006)
Click on the arrow to the right to navigate to the Stage I example
