Country information/Portugal/Newsletter
News from Portugal April 2013
Changes on the board of the Portuguese Association
Due to the electoral process there were changes on the board of the Portuguese Association. Elisabete Roldão is now the President until next election, in November 2016, with a group of 18 other colleagues all of them volunteers. Several projects are being held on areas as marketing, continuous formation/education, development of the profession and institutional communication.
One of the first actions was the review of the web page of the association, the creation of a new image in the official documents and a new way of communication. It is being implemented a new process of approaching the national association to the occupational therapists in Portugal and also to the general public.
In the last five years four more schools open the educational program of Occupational Therapy in Portugal. The association is developing efforts to establish a relation with these schools in order to support them to submit their programs to the WFOT recognition.
7th National Congress of Occupational Therapy
The 7th National Congress of Occupational Therapy occurred in the north of Portugal, in Penafiel on 26th and 27th of October 2012. The congress theme was “New responses to a changing society”. Intended to be a challenge to presentations of new approaches, examples of entrepreneurship,and good practices, there were presentations and workshops. Due to the economic and political situation in Portugal, occupational therapists are worried with the increasing of social fragilities in the population. We believe the occupational therapists have an important role throughout the creation of new responses, enabling the people to be active and participatory in citizenship roles.
We had the honor to have with us Jeanne Jackson, Hellen Gill-Thwaites and Ros Irwin who shared their excellent work and great experience with the Portuguese Occupational Therapists.
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