State guidelines for school-based occupational therapy: 1989 survey.

This article was accepted/or publication November 15, 1989. Ater the enactment of the Education for All Hand· icapped Children Act of 1975 (Public Law 94-142), the public schools recruited 18.3% of all occupational therapists (American Occupational Therapy Association [AOTAJ, 1982), the current per­ centage being 17% (AOTA, 1986; 1. Silvergleit, per­ sonal communication, May 1989). For the first time, visible numbers of therapists were practicing outside of the medical model. One way in which occupational therapists were able to orient and integrate them­ selves into the educational service provision model (Coutinho & Hunter, 1988) was through the develop­ ment and distribution of gUidelines for school-based occupational therapy. National and state professional associations, groups of school-based therapists, local school dis­ tricts, and state departments of education were among the groups proViding guidelines to ease the transition to school-based practice. The latter group's guide­ lines generally responded to the problems that were created as local education agencies initiated occupa­ tional therapy services (Louisiana Department of Education, 1980, 1984; Tennessee Department of Education, 1987). My daily use of the gUidelines developed by the Louisiana Department of Education (1984) and the eligibility criteria adopted by the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (1987) (see also Carr, 1989) fostered my interest in state gUide­ lines and prompted this survey. The purposes of this survey were to determine which states and territories developed occupational therapy and physical therapy gUidelines after the en­ actment of Public Law 94-142 and the content areas addressed by these gUidelines. This paper reports the occupational therapy data only. Please note that throughout the remainder of this paper, the term states refers to both states and territories.