Update: We still have space available! If you would like to register now but defer payment until closer to the start of the workshop, please contact us at [email protected]. Thank you!

"The CO-OP Approach Comprehensive Workshop"

8:30 am - 3:30 pm

(Time: TBD)

This course has been approved for 15 contact hours of CE credit. 

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This workshop will be limited to the first 40 registrants.

Register here!

The goal of the Cognitive Orientation to daily Occupational Performance approach (CO-OP) is to enable children and adults with performance difficulties, be they physical, cognitive, or other, to succeed in performing the everyday tasks and activities that are important to them. It was developed to provide therapists with an evidence-based approach to enabling performance success in an effective and efficient way.

1. Its theoretical foundations are based on evidence.
2. The CO-OP Approach (TM) itself has been carefully researched, with a number of populations making it one of the most researched approaches in rehabilitation. 
3. Individual therapists who use CO-OP with individual clients do assessments and collect evidence throughout the intervention to ensure that the client is learning cognitive strategies and acquiring their chosen skills.

This comprehensive course provides all of the content necessary for health care practitioners to use the CO-OP Approach (TM) at a competent level in their practice. Participants will be able to explain the seven key features of the CO-OP Approach (TM), do occupation-based, client-centered goal setting, carry out dynamic performance analysis (DPA), identify potential strategies, frame intervention sessions using cognitive strategies (GPDC), apply guided discovery, incorporate basic enabling principles into their sessions, and apply CO-OP in an evidence-based manner all at a competent level. A certificate of attendance is provided.  

This course will include a two-day in-person workshop followed by a virtual follow-up session to allow for the application of learning from the course. This workshop is open to health care professionals.

Speakers:

Dr. Helene J. Polatajko is a distinguished, educator, clinician and researcher. Now, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy and the Rehabilitation Institute at the University of Toronto. Dr. Polatajko is a recognized world leader in the field of developmental coordination disorder  (DCD) and in the profession of occupational therapy. Dr. Polatajko’s seminal research on the nature and management of developmental coordination disorder spurred a paradigm shift in assessing and treating performance problems in individuals with DCD and related disorders. Dr. Polatajko’s work initiated the  development, evaluation and implementation of the Cognitive Orientation to daily Occupational Performance Approach, at first for children with developmental coordination disorder and then, working with colleagues and graduate students, across significant diagnostic groups. Research evidence now supports the use of the Approach in addressing the performance problems of children and adults with DCD, Stroke, ABI, ASD, Cognitive Impairments and others. 

Dr. Polatajko has received numerous  awards in recognition of the international impact of her work. In 1992, she was awarded the Muriel Driver Lectureship, the highest honor in Canada for an occupational therapist, given for sustained service and significant contributions to Canadian occupational therapy. Subsequently, she was inducted into the American Occupational Therapy Foundation Academy of Research (1996), as a Fellow of the Canadian Association of Occupational Therapists (2002), a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences (2009), a lifetime member of the Ontario Society of Occupational Therapists (2007), and a lifetime member of the Canadian Association of Occupational Therapists (2020). In April 2018, she received a Leadership Service Commendation Award from the American Occupational Therapy Foundation and is the only Canadian and one of only two non-Americans to receive this award. Most recently she was given an honorary doctorate from Western University and made an Officer of the Order of Canada!  ["Created in 1967, the Order of Canada recognizes outstanding achievement, dedication to the community and service to the nation...Those who bear the Order’s iconic snowflake insignia have changed our nation’s measure of success and, through the sum of their accomplishments, have helped us build a better Canada."]

Lara Collins Barros, OTD, OTR/L is a school-based OT working in the Chicago suburbs with over 25 years of experience. She discovered the CO-OP Approach while completing her OTD at NYU, completed the introductory course in 2019 and was hooked! Lara had the privilege of writing a guideline for school-based OTs using the CO-OP approach, with the mentorship of Dr. Polatajko, with the hopes that other school-based therapists will see the value in using CO-OP in their practice.

You can learn much more about the CO-OP Approach on the International Cognitive Approaches Network (ICAN) website here.

(Not a member? Join here!)

This workshop will be limited to the first 40 registrants.

Register here!