Advocating for Occupational Therapy in Local School Districts: Suggestions for Recovery/Stimulus Funds Uses
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) (P.L. 111-5) was signed into law by President Obama on February 17, 2009. The law, passed as an effort to jump start the economy, provided a total of $787 billion dollars in new federal spending. Much of the spending was focused on tax relief but education and health care spending was also significant; totaling over $112 billion dollars.
Federal guidelines for spending ARRA funds provide significant latitude for states and local entities to spend the money as they feel would most appropriately benefit their communities and most effectively stimulate the economy while making needed investments. Although parameters exist there is a real opportunity for funds to be spent on occupational therapy–related activities. Occupational therapy practitioners are encouraged to advocate within their communities in order to ensure decision makers are aware of how they can use ARRA funds to support school-based occupational therapy practitioners and the children and other professionals who can benefit from their expertise.
Consider the following suggestions as you develop your plan to advocate within your community and school-district:
Recruitment/Retention of Occupational Therapy Practitioners
- Recommend sign-on bonus/stipend; loan forgiveness; paid liability insurance; rent offset for new employees.
- Suggest hiring of additional OT staff to train in anticipation of replacing those retiring in 1–2 years.
- Consider payment of all or part of professional student tuition in return for work commitment.
- Provide a cash incentive for referring a new hire.
- Expand scope of benefits to include state and national association dues, which ensures access to evidence-based practice literature.
- Expand scope of benefits to allow individuals to attend continuing education of their choice that pertains to their school practice.
- Provide stipends for students for fieldwork.
- Provide stipends for practitioners who supervise Level II fieldwork students.
- Offer tuition and time compensation for current employees to improve their skills through applicable graduate education (fund individuals or a cohort).
Advancing Occupational Therapy Practice
- Recommend stipends for research assistants to assist with investigating practices that are evidence-based, and document results that improve student participation and performance through publication.
- Advocate for purchase and installation of district- or program-wide software applications (e.g., MS Office Communicator System) for bringing training, professional development, and consultation to larger numbers of practitioners with less travel involved.
- Advocate for purchase and installation of district- or program-wide software applications (e.g., MS Office Communicator System) for parent training.
Assistive and Adaptive Equipment/Materials for Students
- Consider purchase of speech-to-text software for all classroom computers.
- Advocate for purchase of software that assists with written production (e.g., word prediction) for all classroom computers.
- Recommend outfitting one computer on each campus with accessibility software and a variety of keyboards and mouse set-ups that can be accessible to all students and classrooms by mounting on a wheeled cart.
