The Image of the Profession in the Field of Developmental Disability: A Decade of Writing

Abstract

The contents of a profession's journal portray one image of that profession. This paper reports a review of articles on developmental disability published in the Australian Occupational Therapy Journal over the last decade. Two levels of analysis were conducted on the twenty‐one articles located. Five themes were identified: treatment programmes, disorders and associated deficits, service delivery systems, role definition and concepts and principles. Possible reasons for the appearance and frequency of these themes are advanced. Implications of the image portrayed through these articles are discussed within the context of current occupational therapy practice in the field of developmental disability.

Records: One Measure of Occupational Therapy Practice in the Field of Developmental Disabilities

“…A recent review of Australian occupational therapy literature (Llewellyn, 1990) reveals a paucity of articles on developmental disabilities with none addressing documentation in this field. The study presented here therefore sought to address the following questions: do New South Wales occupational therapists have documented records for their adult developmentally disabled clients and, if so, do these documented records contain goal statements?…”