April is OT Month & US Small Business Week is Approaching
We are proud to announce that our Oakley Home Access co-owners, Justin Oakley and Michael Vieira, share the honor of being named as Rhode Island’s 2019 Small Business Person of the Year by the U.S. Small Business Administration.
Each year, the U.S. Small Business Administration celebrates National Small Business Week (May 5-11, 2019) by recognizing the achievements of outstanding small business owners and entrepreneurs across the United States.
We are extremely honored to be considered for such a prestigious accolade.
On May 5, we will be making the trip to Washington, DC, to be honored at the National Small Business Week award ceremony, along with winners from across the United States, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and Guam. Key talking points during our visit will be on the importance of funding programs for home modifications on a federal level.
To be recognized in this way for sharing our passion and helping others is a truly humbling experience. We will proudly represent Rhode Island in Washington, DC.
Every April we celebrate a profession that is integral in health care settings and is the foundation on which we’ve built our company’s mission: Occupational Therapy.
Occupational therapy helps people do the things they want and need to do through the therapeutic use of daily activities (occupations). Occupational therapists enable people of all ages to live life to the fullest by helping them promote health, and live better with injury, illness, or disability.
Common occupational therapy interventions include helping children with disabilities to participate fully in school and social situations, helping people recovering from injury to regain skills, and providing support for older adults experiencing physical and cognitive changes. Occupational therapy services typically include:
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an individualized evaluation, during which the client/family and occupational therapist determine the person’s goals,
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customized intervention to improve the person’s ability to perform daily activities and reach the goals, and
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an outcomes evaluation to ensure that the goals are being met and/or make changes to the intervention plan.
Occupational therapy practitioners have a holistic perspective, where the focus is on adapting the environment and/or task to fit the person, and the person is an integral part of the therapy team.
Occupational therapy as a health profession began in the early 1910s and challenged the views of mainstream medicine. The early twentieth century had a rising incidence of disability related to industrial accidents, tuberculosis, World War I, and mental illness. Up until this time, occupational therapy had been concerned primarily with the treatment of people with mental illness. Following this, World War II and the ensuing skyrocketing demand for occupational therapists to treat those injured in the war, started an era of dramatic growth and change. Occupational therapists needed to be skilled not only in the use of constructive activities such as crafts, but also increasingly in the use of activities of daily living.
During the post-war years, practice was standardized and the profession has continued to grow and expand its scope and settings of practice. Occupational therapists’ roles have expanded to include political advocacy as well as toward concepts of occupational justice and other human rights issues.
Today, the modern occupational therapist has many venues to help people. We at Oakley Home Access have taken our passion and experience with occupational therapy and created our service offerings to help those wanting to age in place and create a safer home environment.
With Justin’s experience as an occupational therapist, he can identify areas of concern when performing home safety assessments and recommend proper solutions to solve these problems. His caring advice has helped many clients in both Rhode Island and Massachusetts. Mike leads the team of technicians to install Justin’s recommended items efficiently and with a minimum of disruption. Our goal is to truly live up to the values on which our profession was based: adapting the environment and/or task to fit the person.
Oakley Home Access is here to help you. We offer free home safety assessments, home modifications, and tools to age in place. Learn more about everything Oakley Home Access at OakleyHomeAccess.com. Also, please visit our showroom at 322 S. Pier Road in Narragansett, where you will find demonstrations of our adaptive equipment.