Developing Guidelines for Client-Centred Occupational Therapy Practice

The Canadian Guidelines for the client-centred practice of occupational therapy are national, generic, consensus guidelines developed to address growing concerns inside and outside the profession for assuring the quality of health services. From 1979 to 1987, successive Task Forces, sponsored by the Department of National Health and Welfare and the Canadian Association of Occupational Therapists, developed three volumes of guidelines. A pivotal guideline in Volume 1 is a conceptual framework of occupational therapy's central concern: occupational peiformante within an individual's physical, cultural and social environment. Volume I also outlines stages in the process of client-centred occupational therapy practice, and specific assessment and program planning guidelines. Volume II covers issues, concepts and fundamental elements of intervention, as well as specific guidelines for intervention, discharge, follow-up and evaluation. Volume III reviews issues in outcome measurement given occupational therapy'...