Writing occupation-focused goals

Planning the implementation of enabling strategies is an essential process in the practice of occupational therapy. It is much more than a sequence of steps therapists employ to provide a service for individuals. It is an organisational structure that facilitates the occupational reasoning process for conducting assessments, identifying goals, electing strategies and evaluating outcomes. This chapter provides a linear structure for developing occupation-focused enabling strategies. This approach has been specifically developed to assist therapists to identify and write occupation-focused goals and link strategies and evaluation methods directly to the occupational engagement or performance outcome. If occupational therapy strategies are not carefully planned, they may lack focus on occupation, fail to directly address goals and be ineffective in achieving desired occupational engagement or performance outcomes. Therefore planning is a skill all therapists must master to ensure appropriate and effective service provision to individuals.