The Home Environment

TL;DRAbstract

Occupational therapists play a key role in recommending modifications to the physical home environment, usually to enhance a person’s occupational performance, health, safety, independence, and well-being. Yet as a profession, we have given little consideration to the meaning that this unique context has for our clients or to the impact that these changes may have on their experience of home. Drawing from recent occupational therapy literature and the disciplines of environmental psychology and gerontology, this chapter explores the nature of home and then presents a framework for considering the experience of home, describing the physical, personal, occupational, social, temporal, cultural, and societal dimensions that occur when one engages with or occupies the home environment. The relationship between a person and their dwelling is unique and complex, and it is important that therapists understand and acknowledge the nature of this relationship if they are to successfully negotiate

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