Sue Parkinson, practicing occupational therapist 1987-2011
Acute Mental Health, Derbyshire, England

For me, working in Acute Mental Health, it was MOHO that prevented me from becoming frustrated by never seeing my clients reach their long-term goals. MOHO enabled me to identify and measure the subtle progress that my clients made in the early stages of recovery and gave me the tools to affirm their strengths and share these with the wider team, thereby renewing my passion for occupational therapy

Meanwhile, MOHO has helped many other occupational therapists in Derbyshire to provide best practice. My friend, Karen Wheeler, told me that MOHO helped her to establish that “we can offer something valuable & unique to the Community Mental Health Team that is client-centred right from the initial assessment.” Another colleague, Karen Kerry, who serves clients with learning disabilities echoed this sentiment; she told me that she values MOHO because it enables her to match occupational therapy to the needs of her clients instead of making the clients fit in with therapy. Similarly, Sandra Town, working in child and adolescent mental health, noted that MOHO means a lot to her because it proves to her that her interventions weren't just “cooked up in the kitchen”!

Finally, Sara Watling told me, “We had nothing before MOHO came along,” She had been unable to find any standardised occupational assessments that suited working in a day hospital setting with older adults. That's not exactly the whole story, of course. In common with so many occupational therapists, she would have been using one or two ‘home-grown’ assessments. I wonder how many of us have duplicated our efforts in this way by constantly ‘re-inventing the wheel’, instead of putting our efforts into gathering data with proven outcome measures to increase the evidence base of our profession?