Little Acorns and Big Trees

There’s five of us involved in this little adventure, and, we’re fortunate to call ourselves friends as well as colleagues. Earlier in the year, as we do often, we were chatting about our professional lives and the services we are proud to provide for our patients. We chatted about our professional and personal hopes for the future and how we wanted to explore the creativity involved with Occupational Therapy and be more determinant of our own futures.

Somehow, the idea of developing a private Occupational Therapy practice started to evolve, completely organically at first. The more we chatted about it, the more ideas we came up with and the more we realised that collectively we have the passion and skills to put this idea into action.

It’s a little bit daunting but very exciting.

As we talked, we inspired each other with our passion for excellent, patient centred care. For helping people reach their full potential through occupation and above all, being able to provide truly goal-focused Occupational Therapy to help people retain or regain their independence.

So, You Matter Occupational Therapy was born (thanks Alana, for our name) and we started to explore what we could offer to private clients.

Individualised, home-based community rehabilitation that is entirely centred around what matters to our clients and is taken at their pace. We want to be able to help people to get back to their hobbies and interests, we want to be able to support people to access their local community and engage in activity that reduces social isolation. We want to be an option for families who are worried about their loved one at home and who want some options to support them to increase their independence and remain at home for as long as possible in the safest way.

We understand the impact of illness, injury or recent hospitalisation on an individual’s function and ability to continue to engage in every-day activities, and because we understand the impact, we are passionate about helping to overcome this. We want to be a solution to support people to regain control of their lives.

As individuals, and as a team, something we are very passionate about is the power of community and beyond individual therapy, You Matter is committed to fostering a sense of community and connection. We are currently developing a comprehensive programme that includes free community groups and local resources tailored to your needs. These groups offer social interaction, shared experiences, and mutual support, enhancing your overall quality of life. Additionally, we provide information and access to local resources that can assist you in various aspects of daily living, from transportation services to social events.

One of our goals with this business is to spread awareness of the value of Occupational Therapy, we hope to use this blog page to do that. Any fellow Occupational Therapists that are reading this will know about those blank looks when we tell someone what we do: “Oh, so like a physio,” or “Oh, occupational health and all that.” So hopefully we can contribute to the collective effort to change that. Especially within our local communities.

 Going back to those initial chats, the more we talked, the more the ideas grew, rooted in our collective passion for our profession and the bond we share as friends who have worked together (sometimes in pretty tough situations). The ideas branched out like a rapidly growing tree, and it got me thinking of the acorn and the oak tree: one small idea growing into something incredible.

We’re not sure where this new business journey is going to take us but we know the plans we have for it, collectively and as individuals and we have a plan (based on OT theory, so we’re OT-ing ourselves too) as to how we will get there.

We’re hoping that from this little acorn we can grow a huge oak tree that forms part of our individual stories and benefits many others.

Keep checking back for our regular blog post updates and please get in touch if you’d like to know more about what we do or would like to contribute in any way.