Our priorities

We want to expand the number of occupational therapists in GP surgeries so everyone can benefit from early intervention to stay active and independent, at home, at work and everywhere else.

Our research project has shown that occupational therapists bring benefits to patient populations, supporting primary care teams to manage demand and meet local need. They also reduce the ongoing demands on secondary care and other sectors.

Occupational therapists add proven value and capacity across the primary care system. They enable better integration with pathways across sectors. They can facilitate partnerships between primary, secondary and community and voluntary care services.

We support the drive for a multi-disciplinary team approach in primary care across the UK. 

We want to ensure occupational therapy roles are fully funded and facilitate sustainable growth as our workforce grows. We want investment in future roles to be based on proven value.

For example, the value of occupational therapists to the wider system such as secondary care needs to be understood so that costs and benefits can be shared. We must focus on ensuring the roles work for primary care but understand their wider impact.

We need sufficient staffing levels (density of staff per patient population) for the value of occupational therapy roles to be felt and successfully embedded. There is a risk of unsuccessful implementation if roles are stretched thinly across areas resulting in each GP getting a limited service. This also risks poor retention and burn-out for staff.

We want to ensure there is local flexibility to decide how to implement occupational therapy in primary care, in partnership with community providers. It should consider local population needs, existing staffing levels in the primary care workforce and across the system.

There needs to be a pipeline for the occupational therapy primary care workforce with funding for development. This will include training for primary care skills that can only be learnt in primary care.

Supervision which ensures capability and safety, provides governance, and develops the workforce in primary care must be resourced and planned.

Contracts need to ensure support and sufficient time for continued professional development as a regulatory requirement.

Pre-registration training placements for occupational therapists in primary care must be supported to expose the future workforce to careers in primary care.