Karen Stagnitti

Deakin University · School of Health and Social Development

Nurses and allied health professionals are responsible for assessing the child’s physical, emotional, psychological, social, and developmental health. Therapeutic play approaches may be integrated to support assessment procedures to be approached in a distinct, creative, and developmentally sensitive way. This chapter introduces a range of therapeu...

Introduction: Many children in Aotearoa (New Zealand) and Australia experience complex trauma and its developmental impacts. Internationally, occupational therapists work with complex trauma and use sensory-based, integrative, and functional approaches. The practices of occupational therapists in Aotearoa and Australia with children experiencing c...

The non-acute health charity sector forms part of the global health services industry. Organisational Performance Measurement (OPM) is fundamental for modern business to achieve sustained excellence yet is under-utilised by non-acute health charities. The Non-Acute Health Charity Performance Implementation Framework (NCPI Framework) was developed t...

Introduction This study compares the self-initiated pretend play abilities of preschool-aged children with an acquired brain injury, with the self-initiated pretend play ability of their neurotypical peers. Method A non-experimental group comparison was conducted between 22 preschool-aged neurotypical children (M = 52.8 months, SD = 7.1 months) an...

Introduction Learn to Play Therapy aims to build children's ability to spontaneously initiate pretend play. The purpose of this study was to explore evidence for this therapy for children with autism spectrum disorder by investigating the changes in a child's pretend play and key techniques used in the process of therapy. Methods Six children with...

Background Organisational performance measurement (OPM) is an evidence-based tool for planning business improvement and creating sustainable competitive advantage. Despite its value, non-acute health charities under-utilise OPM. The purpose of this paper is to provide the rationale and a detailed description of an OPM implementation model developed...

Strong oral language skills are foundational for literacy development and begin before a child enters formal schooling. Oral language development has been related to pretend play abilities in children. Children, particularly those from disadvantaged areas, who enter school with low pretend play levels and oral language abilities, are at risk for le...

This paper aims to explore the impacts of a Learn to Play programme in specialist schools for children with multiple developmental issues. Specialist schools are schools dedicated to children with IQs below 70 and who may also have other developmental issues. The Learn to Play programme focusses on facilitating children’s enjoyment and ability to s...

In play therapy with children, identifying play themes is key to understanding the meaning within sessions, and allows therapists to systematically track therapeutic change. This study investigated if play themes could be identified using a time limited, standardized assessment, for children aged 5–7 years. A descriptive, observational mixed method...

Introduction: Play is an indication of children's development and how they function. In occupational therapy it is regarded as an important occupation of childhood. Assessment of a child's play should be included in the test batteries of occupational therapists, who understand the construct validity of the assessment they have chosen. Our aim was...

Introduction Early adolescence is a time of increased social interaction with peers. Social competence is related to pretend play ability in younger children, but a lack of pretend play ability in childhood may also be associated with social challenges in early adolescence. Adolescents who find social situations challenging experience alienation fr...

It is important for assessments used by occupational therapists to have documented evidence of their validity. This adds to the knowledge about what specific factors assessments measure and inform their utility for use in clinical practice by occupational therapists. The convergent validity between the Children’s Assessment of Participation and Enj...

Background Non acute health charities form part of the global health services industry yet face concerns regarding performance and accountability. Organisational performance measurement (OPM) is enables performance however is under utilised in the non acute health charity sector. The Non-acute Health Charity Performance Implementation Framework (NC...

In Australia, children with developmental delay and disability, who have an IQ less than 70, are eligible to attend a specialist school. These schools are called special schools or special developmental schools. Teachers, occupational therapists, and speech pathologists work in these schools together with integration aids. Children with development...

Introduction: Screen-time has become a regular occupation for young children at home and school, with little evidence of its impact on children's developmental skills. This study explored the association between children's screen-time, fine motor, in-hand manipulation (IHM), visual-motor integration (VMI), sensory processing (SP) and parent-report...

Social play and social interactions are essential occupations for children, but can be challenging for children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). This systematic review investigates cortisol responsivity in children with ASD during naturalistic social play and social interactions. Methodology: Six control and comparison studies of moderate qual...

This study describes the self-initiated pretend play abilities of children who had sustained an acquired brain injury.

Background In 2014, a large metropolitan mental health service in Australia developed a senior role (Lead Research Occupational Therapist) to address an identified need for greater research and knowledge translation, and associated capacity building. The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact, in the first 2.5 years, of this role across a ran...

Background Organisational performance measurement is a recognised business management tool and essential for survival and success. There is a paucity of methodological studies of organisational performance measurement relating to non-acute healthcare charities and this study is the first to suggest a set of evidence-informed organisational performa...

Participation is a multidimensional concept that has evolved from the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health as one’s engagement in life. This study investigated the impact that personal and environmental factors have on typically developing children’s activity participation (n = 18). Children and parents/caregivers comp...

Objective: We sought to investigate the relationship between sensory processing and pretend play in typically developing children. Method: Forty-two typically developing children ages 5-7 yr were assessed with the Child Initiated Pretend Play Assessment and the Home and Main Classroom forms of the Sensory Processing Measure (SPM). Results: The...

Organisation performance measurement is relevant for non-profit charitable organisations as they strive for security in an increasingly competitive funding environment. This study aimed to identify the priority measures and indicators of organisational performance of an Australian non-government charitable organisation that delivers non-acute healt...

Background/Aim: Wilcock’s Occupational Perspective of Health (OPH) aligns with the profession’s re-discovery of its holistic, occupationally focused roots. Its dimensions of occupation–doing, being, becoming and belonging – resonate strongly with therapists on an intuitive, implicit level. However, its documented use in practice to date has been sp...

Research to investigate the efficiency, appropriateness, and feasibility of a directive play therapy approach for children with complex needs must consider methodological issues that impact on internal and external validity. This paper discusses methodological issues that arose when research was concerned with a directive play therapy approach call...

Background/aim: Culturally relevant assessments of Australian Indigenous children's social pretend play do not exist. This study investigated the content validity and cultural validity of the Indigenous Play Partner Scale (I-PPS). Methods: Six pairs of children (i.e. 12 children) aged four-six years from a remote Australian town were videoed pla...

Background: Play, particularly pretend play, has a cognitive basis and has been linked to the language and social ability. Objectives: The goal of this study was to examine face and content validity, inter-rater, intra-rater and test-retest reliability of the Persian translation of the child-initiated pretend play assessment Methods: Ten occupation...

Empathy is a difficult characteristic to define, teach and assess; the ‘nebulous’ properties of empathic behaviour often means that educators fail to incorporate the explicit teaching and assessment of empathy within the curriculum. One solution suggested is that teaching empathy in an interprofessional education setting is an effective educational...

Background: Dementia residential facilities can be described as traditional or non-traditional facilities. Non-traditional facilities aim to utilise principles of environmental design to create a milieu that supports persons experiencing cognitive decline. This study aimed to compare these two environments in rural Australia, and their influence o...

This article reports on the evidence for mental health occupational therapy in peer-reviewed journals from 2000 to 2013. Descriptive and inductive methods were used to address this question, with evidence from CINAHL, OTDBase, PSYCInfo, SCOPUS, and Google Scholar® included. Many articles (n = 1,747) were found that met the inclusion and exclusion c...

Abstract Background: Children residing in families which experience intergenerational poverty are known to be a high risk group. There is minimal literature on how parents experiencing intergenerational poverty view their role as parents and the value they place on children’s play. The objective of this study was to examine how such parents view t...

Background and Aim: Although play seems to be a simple concept, it is complex and varies according to individual experiences. Play is a process that follows no rule. It is a spontaneous, funny, flexible, completely attractive, vital, and challenging behavior that aims at no goal. Pretend play starts in childhood since 18 months. The play is a poten...

The current study investigated the influence of a play-based curriculum on the development of pretend play skills and oral language in children attending their first year of formal schooling. In this quasi-experimental design, two groups of children were followed longitudinally across the first 6 months of their first year at school. The children i...

Aim This article outlines the development and implementation of a collaborative feeding care plan (FCP) for stroke patients in an acute stroke ward. The aim of this pilot study was to evaluate the impact of an ecological intervention to improve eating independence in an acute stroke ward environment. Methods An action research approach comprising...

Despite an extensive search, very little literature was found on Australian Indigenous children's play, and more specifically pretend play. Most of the literature found was written in the period from 1840 to the 1950s and was primarily descriptive. We argue that the literature found on Australian Indigenous children's play could be interpreted thro...

Play therapy is an emerging therapeutic discipline, based on play as a child’s natural medium of self-expression. Building on the work of Axline, Oaklander, Landreth and others, it is a primarily non-verbal approach, in which children aged 2 to 12 are free to explore their difficulties, hurts and feelings via play with toys, sand, puppets, clay, ar...

Introduction The aim of this article is to describe and explain a new method for integrating theory and evidence that enables practitioners to translate evidence into action applied in their practice. Method A new multiple methods procedure called the Integrating Theory, Evidence and Action method is described. It is a mixed method that progresses...

It is an accepted fact that resilience is a multifaceted phenomenon which has been proven to affect the learning, growth and development of individuals. A child’s formative years are a time when resilience needs to be promoted so they can cope with the challenges of life. This paper reports some of the findings of an Australian Research Council-fun...

Purpose: This study investigated if the quality of pre-school children's pretend play predicted their semantic organization and narrative re-telling ability when they were in early primary school. It was hypothesized that the elaborateness of a child's play and the child's use of symbols in play were predictors of their semantic organization and n...

Early childhood is an important time for the development of resilience. A recently completed study has followed three cohorts of resilient children and young people living in disadvantaged areas in Victoria, Australia, through different transitions in their educational careers. This paper focuses on the early childhood cohort, where we have followe...

The importance of the quality of preschool children’s pretend play ability to the subsequent development of semantic organisation and narrative re-telling skills in early primary school This study investigated if the quality of preschool children’s pretend play predicted their semantic organisation and narrative re-telling ability when they were in...

ABSTRACT The four dimensions of occupation developed by Wilcock in the Occupational Perspective on Health-doing, being, becoming, and belonging-have evolved. Although the inter-relationships between the dimensions have been explored by clinicians and researchers to some degree, the reciprocal and multidimensional nature of these relationships are r...

ABSTRACT This article will present a critical analysis of the four dimensions of occupation, doing, being, becoming and belonging, and propose clearer understandings of the terms. The concepts have developed and evolved since Wilcock first introduced them as main constructs of Occupational Perspective of Health (OPH), with doing and being receiving...

I, Rachael Schmidt, do not have an affiliation (financial or otherwise) with an equipment, medical device or communications organization. Aim: The paper presents the influential factors that contribute to decision making in wheelchair-seating procurement. Background: The study explored the Australian seating service experiences from the insiders'...

I, Rachael Schmidt, do not have an affiliation (financial or otherwise) with an equipment, medical device or communications organization. Aim: The paper presents the social justice findings from a study into the Australian (wheelchair) seating service experience. As this study explored the insider's perspective, three participants' examples are sh...

OBJECTIVE. We examined the empirical evidence to answer the research question, What is the relationship between play and sensory processing in children ages 3–12 yr? METHOD. The PRISMA guidelines were followed to complete a systematic review. Academic databases were searched using play, leisure, sensory processing, and sensory integration as primar...

This chapter considers the impact of learning disabilities on young people's ability to receive therapeutic benefit from standard therapies such as CBT. An alternative approach to assessment and treatment based on evidence showing the efficacy of pretend play to improve the ability to solve problems, manage impulsivity and form and sustain social r...

Foreword Dr Athena Drewes Introduction Justine Howard Section 1: Using Play Therapeutically with Individual Clients 1. The Therapeutic Touchstone Eileen Prendiville 2. The Consciousness Dimension in Play Therapy: Sharpening the Play Therapist’s Focus and Skills Lorri Yasenik and Ken Gardner 3. Using Play Therapeutically with Children in a Hospital...

Since its inception as a profession in the United States in 1917, occupational therapy has used a range of ways of knowing and methods to develop its knowledge of the relationship between occupation and health. Ways of knowing are the understandings employed to answer questions, solve problems and generally explain the world. There are three main w...

Health and Wellbeing in Childhood - edited by Susanne Garvis September 2017

Family-centred practice involves allowing families' needs to direct therapy. Parents and therapists often come from different socio-economic positions, yet little is known about how this impacts family-centred practice. This study aimed to explore expectations of care among parents on low incomes and among occupational therapists who work with thes...

Objective: To increase flexible thinking, self-regulation and empathy for adolescents with ASD. Method: Five adolescents (M = 13.5 years; SD = 0.84 years; four males) were assessed pre and post intervention for flexible thinking and social competence (as measured by the SSIS). Parents rated their adolescent's social competence pre and post inter...

Supporting Resilience is a research project taking place in the state of Victoria, Australia. The study is a collaboration between university researchers and the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development, VicHealth (the state health promotion agency) and Community Connections (a statewide service provider NGO) and has been funded by t...

Purpose: To provide an overview of current knowledge and practice that supports an occupational perspective to health promotion for people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).Method: Evidence was identified from a range of electronic databases using inclusion and exclusion criteria. Studies were subjected to a process of critical a...

Abstract Health and wellbeing includes a need for built environments to accommodate and be inclusive of the broadest range of people and a corresponding need to ensure graduates are ready to engage in this field of interprofessional and inter-industry practise. All too often, interprofessional education in higher education is neglected with a tende...

There is a need to maximise rural clinical fieldwork placement to build health workforce capacity. This study investigated allied health professionals’ (AHPs) experience of supervising students as part of work-integrated learning in public and private rural health settings. An anonymous postal questionnaire with 30 questions was used to collect qua...

A multidisciplinary intervention to improve school readiness in pre-school children with developmental concerns was examined. Seventeen children attending the “School Ready” program, their parents, and pre-school teachers participated in this quasi-experimental study with two data collections points. Results indicated decreased social disruption as...

Background/aim This study aimed to establish changes in upper limb strength and range of motion that may occur over a short period of time when rehabilitation is focused on lower limb injuries. Methods The research study was a single group with a pre-post design. A total of 24 patients receiving therapy services for a lower limb injury received an...

Purpose The purpose of this study was to answer the question ‘How do people who have experienced psychosis describe their engagement in activities of daily living and occupations?’ Procedures A qualitative metasynthesis was undertaken on nine studies (encompassing 73 participants) published in occupational therapy literature. Only studies that had...

A logical approach takes you from student to health professional Part 1 covers broader issues such as getting ready for placement, your role, rights and responsibilities, supervision, assessment and working in teams. Part 2 provides information on a variety of clinical fieldwork placement settings, and how to prepare for each. Part 3 helps you tr...

b>Background: Depression can have a strongly negative impact on a person’s ability to engage with and participate in activities of daily living. Clinicians currently seeking guidance on best practice in this area currently need to access and critique a wide range of evidence from a number of disciplines. While some clinical practice guidelines are...

The Better Access to Mental Health program has enabled eligible occupational therapists to provide services to people with a mental health condition. No studies have yet reported the influence of occupational therapy under this scheme. The aim of this study was to investigate whether attending an occupational therapist under this initiative influen...

Resilience for children is positive adaptation and a capacity to thrive despite challenging circumstances. Children demonstrating resilience are seen to have strong cognitive skills and have developed positive peer relationships. The ‘Supporting Resilience’ project is exploring the conditions and characteristics of resilience of young children and...

The aim of this study was to investigate the change in the relationship between play, language and social skills of children aged 5-8 years pre and post participation in the 'Learn to Play' program. The Learn to Play program is a child led play based intervention aimed at developing self-initiated pretend play skills in children. All 19 participant...

Objective: This exploratory study aimed to describe the self-initiated pretend play of three children who had sustained an acquired brain injury (ABI). No previous research was found. Methods: Three children aged 3.0-6.0 years were recruited through purposive sampling. Pretend play ability was assessed using the Child-Initiated Pretend Play Asse...

An alternative training model within occupational therapy developed at Deakin University, in Australia, named Occupation, Wellness and Life-Satisfaction (OWLS) is presented. OWLS provides students with opportunities to practice in nontraditional settings, thus enabling strategic learning in non-clinical settings, including working with professional...