We want to highlight one of our long-time partners, Saint Catherine University’s Occupational Therapy program. We have an established partnership with this program through which we collaborate on service-learning projects that involve graduate occupational therapy (OT) students evaluating the homes of low-income older adults and individuals living with a disability. The students make for safety and making recommendations for safety and modifications designed to reduce the risk of falls and other injuries. Our volunteers then make the modifications that are within the scope of our programs. This partnership provides students with a hands-on learning experience that enables them to directly work with low-income clients who are older adults or are living with a disability and. It also provides the homeowners we help with more comprehensive accessibility modification services that are truly tailored to their individual needs.
With the support of a grant from the Minnesota Department of Human Services, we recently expanded our partnership with Saint Catherine University to create and implement an assessment tool in order to measure the effectiveness of our services and adjust them, as needed, to better align with the needs of our clients.
We would like to recognize Catherine Sullivan, Ph.D., OTR/L and Associate Professor, who has been instrumental in the development and cultivation of this relationship. She recently said of our Program Director, Tony Sjogren, “Thanks again for all your time and positive energy. Students could see your passion for helping people who are under-served in the community and clearly were moved to do the same.”
We are proud of this partnership with Saint Catherine University and look forward to continuing to our work together to help low-income homeowners who are older adults or are living with a disability age-in-place successfully and live more safely and independently in their homes!
