This thesis addresses the problem of supporting independent living of elderly people through IT-based homecare services. Independent living is seen as one way to deal with the consequences of an aging population (especially in industrialized countries), which include rising healthcare expenditures and a required shortage of healthcare professionals. Our main goal is to improve the service creat...

OBJECTIVES Occupational therapy literature describes various independent living programs developed by occupational therapists and at times documents their effectiveness, yet none of the literature reviewed examined the involvement of occupational therapists in independent living programs. METHOD Directors of independent living programs in the United States were surveyed to ascertain their use...

Information and communication technology applications can help increase the independence and quality of life of older people, or people with disabilities who live in their own homes. A risk management framework is proposed to assist in selecting applications that match the needs and wishes of particular individuals. Risk comprises two components: the likelihood of the occurrence of harm and the...

Since 1985, the Tufts University-Boston School of Occupational Therapy has experimented with a service model for Level I fieldwork that uses independent living skills (ILS) groups. Under the off-site supervision of the course instructor and a Level I coordinator, students taking an Advanced Group Process course have run ILS groups in community agencies using faculty- and staff-developed group p...

BACKGROUND Older adults with concerns of falling show decrements of gait stability under single (ST) and dual task (DT) conditions. To compare the effects of a DT training integrating task managing strategies for independent living older adults with and without concern about falling (CoF) to a non-training control group on walking performance under ST and DT conditions. METHODS Single center ...

In Japan, there is no national 24-hour home care system for people with severe impairments. Despite this fact, a small number of people with Duchenne muscular dystrophy on home mechanical ventilation pursue independent living. Therefore, our aim was to better understand the process by which these individuals arrived at this goal for independence (i.e., choosing to live at home in Japan instead ...

A model for Level I fieldwork in which students co-led independent living skills (ILS) groups in clinical settings and observed occupational therapy evaluation and treatment was implemented in a curriculum and evaluated for its effectiveness. The evaluation surveys from this study suggest that the model is most effective in courses and clinical settings that deal with adult and young adult clie...

This article describes a best practice in the field of intellectual disability, a program for independent living offered by the Center for Integral Training and Development (CADI per its abbreviation in Spanish) for people with intellectual disability in Mexico. A detailed description of an effective program that fosters autonomy, social inclusion and high quality of life in people with intelle...

Adults with cerebral palsy need assistance to maximize their capabilities, interact with others, and achieve independence. They experience difficulty communicating their needs to successfully obtain medical/rehabilitation and independent living services, which are necessary to achieve independent living. Knowledge of the experience of such clients can help occupational therapists to better serv...

The objective of this paper is to identify those variables that best predict a stroke patient's ability to live independently following his/her discharge from medical rehabilitation. The paper draws heavily on a formal research model grounded in independent living (IL) theory. Independent living is defined and operationalized as (1) the patient's ability to live in a nonrestrictive environment ...