April is Occupational Therapy Month, recognizing the contributions of this vital profession and the meaningful difference occupational therapists (OT) make in the lives of the people they work with. Many people with disabilities work with OTs to develop the skills they need to live and work independently.

For more than 10 years, NARIC has distributed the Life Skills Manual developed under a NIDILRR grant.  Dr. Christine Helfrich, who is an OT and has a PhD in public health, designed this four-part program to help people with serious mental conditions who are experiencing homelessness or precarious housing as they transition to stable housing. The manual covers many of the skills needed to manage a home and keep themselves healthy and safe. In honor of Occupational Therapy Month, we chatted with Dr. Helfrich about the Life Skills Manual, how her training as an OT helped in developing the manual, her experience as an OT and a researcher, and advice to OTs interested in research.

The following interview content has been edited for brevity.

Can you give us an overview of the Life Skills Manual?

The Life Skills Manual is actually four manuals: Money Management, Home and Self Care, Safe Community Participation, and Food Management. We started out developing tools for money management for a domestic violence transitional housing program. The manual expanded to include other areas as we worked with the individuals with mental health conditions experiencing homelessness and other groups. There wasn’t anything in existence that was either developmentally appropriate or age appropriate. There were programs for teens and for people with developmental and intellectual disabilities, but there wasn’t anything for people who just didn’t happen to learn these things. We wanted to develop something that was not insulting in any way and wouldn’t feel condescending to people and could be used by anybody. As an OT, I would love to see OTs employed in these places, but I know that that’s not realistic. The next best thing was being able to provide people with a tool to be able to teach life skills.

How did your training and experience as an OT influence your work on the Life Skills Manual?

It really comes from an OT perspective of looking at the person from a strengths-based perspective and looking at the individual as a whole person. I think that strengths-based piece is really critical because it’s what has allowed a lot of people to benefit from the program who didn’t think they wanted to participate or would need it. They came into the group and saw that it was a social learning model where everybody has something to contribute; the group leader is not the expert by any means. Another big piece is our knowledge in activity analysis and breaking things down into small, doable parts. All of the sessions are very detailed and broken down into what you need. There are also ways to adapt it for different levels of functioning: for people who can’t read or can’t see how you might do activities that require reading differently; or with higher functioning people, you might grade it up by dividing into groups and make the activity more competitive.

What advice would you give to up-and-coming OTs who might be interested in following a research versus a practitioner path? 

Get involved in research in some way. There are a lot of ways to get involved without being a full-time researcher. You can get involved in collecting data as part of a research study. If you have an opportunity to conduct research study in class, that’s the best way to find out if you like it or not. Partner with a college or university nearby. Academics are always looking for partners. Get a PhD or other research degree instead of or with an OTD (which is a clinical degree). There are some really unique things created recently to help develop clinicians into researchers. Through the American Occupational Therapy Foundation, the STRIDE committee (Standing for Research Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity) has a grant mechanism that is for clinicians, so the person has to have completed their OTD, but it gives them a small pot of money to do research with a research mentor.

You’ve participated in peer reviews for journals and grant programs, including NIDILRR. Is that something that you would recommend to an up-and-coming OT who wants to get involved in research?

Absolutely! I think that peer reviewing grants and articles is one of the best continuing education things I do for myself. I learn so much in seeing different people’s ideas, seeing what doesn’t work, seeing what from their perspective makes perfect sense but from the reviewer’s perspective it does not, and the importance of getting feedback from multiple people and partnering. The other thing I really see as a reviewer is there are always grants that are submitted by people who don’t have grant writing skills. The ideas are really great and they should be done, but they’re just not developed.

Can you suggest some resources to learn about grant writing?

I was very lucky to be a fellow at the University of Illinois Center for Outcomes Research and Education, which really focused on grant writing. I really learned how to write grants, and that doesn’t happen everywhere. Take grant writing workshops when they are offered, like the one NIDILRR has offered in the past. They’re well worth it if you don’t have that experience. And partnering is so important. In my first grant, I partnered with a principal investigator who had a lot of experience as a NIDILRR grantee and who helped me manage and troubleshoot the grant. Now I do that for other people: I attend meetings and help when they run into issues, and I contribute to the project, usually a qualitative research piece. But my real role is to help them learn how to manage a big grant.

Any other words of wisdom for aspiring OTs and OTs in research?

Take a risk! Go out into the community and do what you think OTs should be doing because it’s really an exciting place to work.