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It is the foundations’ philosophy not to promote ourselves as ‘the experts’, but to provide spaces for us to share experiences, knowledge, and bring people together to learn and develop.

The VdTMoCA Foundation has been running a Forensic SIG for many years, it is one of our most successful events, an opportunity to learn about current practices, and refresh theory to enhance service provision.  We also invite ‘Friends of the Foundation’ to join us who have advanced their practice in their field using the model.

The aim is to run SIGs annually, although it is not always possible, and we know that the use of the model is growing in different fields.  Therefore, if there is interest we will run SIGs for different clinical areas, so please get in touch if you think this would be beneficial to you and your clinical area.

Special Interest Groups are online, free to paying members, or accessible with a purchased ticket.

The Foundation would like to offer support to OTs in leadership and management positions and share our experiences of embedding the model and its theory into practice.  

We would welcome the opportunity to collaborate with services helping to widen the use of the model across the UK and encourage more services to generate evidence and collect outcome measures.  

Please contact a Foundation Team Member or use the General Enquiries email address to ask us a question.

At this time, the VdTMoCA Foundation (UK) does not offer a comprehensive training in the application of the model.  It is advisable to have training before using it with clients, and if you would like to use the standardised Activity Participation Outcome Measure (APOM) to measure client progress, then you must have training in this.  Training in VdTMoCA and the APOM is offered by a few different training companies, see below for details.

Our last event was on the 18th March 2024 and it was AMAZING!

We had over 30 guests, some lively conversations and a lovely lunch provided for us!

We would like to extend a huge thank you to our presenters; Corinne White, Rhona Oxspring, Annymn Adams & Bartley Rock who sparked some very interesting discussions, and a special Thank you to Dr Roshni Khatri for hosting and to Professor Daleen Casteleijn from the Vona & Marie du Toit Foundation in South Africa for joining us all day via a video link!

In the afternoon we were led by Louise & Rhona in sharing our experiences in practice so we can learn from each other, stregthen our community & continue promoting the use of the model back in our work settings

The day was concluded by Roshni & Louise announcing that these sharing events will happen every 2 months on line, which everyone was excited to hear, and we will all meet again in 1 year back in Northampton!

If you want to be a part of these sharing events then watch this space!

Theory to life provides practical, in-service face to face training packages which is not offered by the VdTMoCA Foundation (UK). Whilst people are able to read the theory and complete on-line training provided by ICAN (see below), OT teams then need to understand and apply the theory to practice. Theory to Life presents the theory and then demonstrates its application through further explanation, practical exercises and role play. 

For more information on the training provided please visit www.theorytolife.com

Many of the training courses in the UK are provided by the International Creative Ability Network (ICAN) 

Dr Wendy Sherwood, DipCOT, MSc, PhD is a co-author of the VdTMoCA. Wendy has 33 years experience as an Occupational Therapist and 14 years as a senior lecturer in OT. Wendy has provided VdTMoCA training and CPD events since 2007, and also provides support and consultancy. In response for requests for easily accessible training, the majority of CPD events are online including Zoom-based supervision. Freely downloadable resources are also available on the ICAN website where you can find more information https://www.ican-uk.com

Contact wendy@ican-uk.com

The APOM is an outcome measure specifically designed for occupational therapists in mental health settings and is based on the Vona du Toit Model of Creative Ability (VdTMoCA).  OTs working with the VdTMoCA in neuro rehabilitation or other physical health fields might also find the outcome measure helpful but it has not yet been validated for those groups.

The APOM covers eight domains of activity participation (see graph). Each of these domains consists of several items to be assessed.  The Occupational Therapist rates their service user on each of these items using an 18 point scale.  The scale is based on the levels of Creative Ability as described by Vona du Toit. Once completed the APOM creates a spidergraph which can be used as an outcome measure, and in turn can support treatment planning and goal setting. 

All OTs are welcome to attend training even if they do not work in mental health, as research outside of this field would be of great value and support the development of the model.

APOM training is available online, and costs £100 per person.

Eligibility for training: Occupational Therapists need to have at least one year of experience in using the VdTMoCA.  

Please contact Daleen Casteleijn at daleencasteleijn61@gmail.com for more information.