Our Approach
Integrative Aging In Place grounds its evaluation, treatment, and advisory process in the PEO Model. Successful performance is enabled by the interaction of these three components:
- Abilities needed to complete the task.
- The person's abilities and limitations.
- Supports and barriers in the environment.
Client Factors
Heart and pulmonary conditions. Memory loss. Poor balance. Low energy due to cancer. Mental health challenges associated with a history of trauma. Decreased fine motor skills as a result of arthritis. Gait dysfunction and need of a walker. Chronic pain leading to less activity. All the characteristics about your health and function impact occupational performance and wellbeing. Additionally, habits, routines, values, beliefs - all influence how well you perform a task. Sometimes small changes, identified in collaboration with an advisor, lead to big improvements.
Contexts
Along with the physical environment, other contexts impact occupational performance. Poor sleep due to nighttime urinary incontinence? Consider taking the morning off and grocery shopping in the afternoon (temporal context). Feeling overwhelmed when cooking for 20 on Christmas or Passover? Perhaps hand off preparation of side dishes to family members (social context). As you can see, many factors impact how well you can perform a task. Aging involves accepting change. But it can also include embracing change. An inability to perform a task the way you always have doesn't mean you give up doing what you need or love to do. It means finding new ways to do it and being great at it.
Broader Horizons
By the 1970s, a broader view of how humans function started taking hold with a focus on how supports and barriers in the environment impact performance (indeed, PEO came out of this era). The social model of disability challenged the notion that someone in a wheelchair could not enter a building with stairs at the entrance due to paraplegia. Flipping this reasoning on its head, the argument posited that the problem lay in an environment that was not designed to meet that individual's needs. Taking this a step further, with a ramp in place, is there any disability at all?
Creating supports and eliminating barriers in the environment is integral to the process of maximizing one's occupational performance. No amount of therapy will reverse joint degeneration in someone's shoulders. A lower cabinet height, on the other hand, will eliminate the need of overhead reaching, supporting performance of meal preparation with less or no pain while protecting the joints. You are not broken, you just need to modify your environment.
Activities of Daily Living
Activities of Daily Living
Activities of Daily Living
- Bathing
- Grooming
- Dressing
- Toileting
- Feeding
- Transferring sitting <-> standing
- Navigating in your home
Instrumental ADL
Activities of Daily Living
Activities of Daily Living
- Maintaining your home
- Laundry
- Meal preparation
- Shopping
- Navigating your community
- Financial management
- Health maintenance
- Communication management
- Care of others including pets
Work & Education
Activities of Daily Living
Work & Education
- Employment
- Unpaid work
- Volunteering
- School
- Adult education
- Informal educational pursuits
Leisure
Social Participation
Work & Education
- Physical activity
- Play
- Quiet leisure
Social Participation
Social Participation
Social Participation
- Community
- Family
- Friends & peers
- In-person & virtual
Sleep & Rest
Social Participation
Social Participation
- Sleep hygiene
- Sleep performance
- Rest