How close do you need to be to protect someone? For what diagnoses does this need to be greater OR for what age range OR for what environment OR for what tasks?
Going to put something into a rubbish bin and then washing your hands?
Going to the toilet by yourself within school grounds as a primary school student? (do school’s require kids to go with a buddy?)
An elderly person with dementia within the kitchen? Within the bedroom? Within the backyard? Within the front yard?
How old do you let someone climb up a set of stairs themselves? Where do you stand? How close do you stand? Do you hold on to them? Can you watch from a distance?
If you are in the local shopping centre and you’ve been there lots of times before do you need to provide the same type of supervision?
Sorry. The ‘you’ in this is very important.
Do ‘you’ have a relationship with a child / person that is safe? Under what circumstances is it safe? Do you have qualifications that are required to make sure that someone is safe in certain environments or under certain tasks? An OT does. Parents don’t. Yet parents have extremely detailed knowledge about who is safe for a person to be with and who isn’t. They know what environments to avoid and what not to.
Parents and therapists also know under what CIRCUMSTANCES safety risks change significantly to the point where immediate danger can occur. Parents learn this over extended periods of personal time invested in managing their children / loved ones, but they also learn this through extensive support from their Occupational Therapist, who monitors and supports not only the individual but the entire family.
What are ‘your’ analysis skills like for assessing risks within the environment? for interacting with certain types of people? for completing certain types of tasks?