Occupational Activity Training for Adult Health & Social Care
Vitalyz were well received at College of Occupational Therapists conferences by all the attending professionals.
The COT have fully vetted Vitalyz and now endorse ALL Vitalyz training, therefore recommending Vitalyz to their members.
"Introduction to basic seated exercise in a social care setting"
- 6hrs training & 4hrs work study
- Accredited by OCN
- Endorsed by COT
- Endorsed by REPs
- Open course dates available
An encouraging message from a 4th Yr, OT student (part time)
I am a part-time occupational therapy student and I also work for a London borough council as a trainee social services occupational therapist. When assessing service users, I routinely recommend safe ways in which they can increase their levels of physical activity. This sometimes involves providing information about group sessions that run in the community, such as the local seated exercise group. However, with regard to seated exercise, I had never attended the group and so was not exactly sure of what this comprised of, and the potential benefits this type of exercise may hold.
One day whilst at work, I received an email from our in-house training team outlining a new course that was being run; the title of this course was Level 1 Seated Exercise.
I thought this would be a great opportunity to experience seated exercise first-hand and I hoped that the course would provide me with increased knowledge in relation to physical activity prescription.
I found the Vitalyz seated exercise course to exceed my expectations. It was fun, relevant, and highly informative. Tony Duke (course facilitator) was clearly experienced in both teaching the seated exercise course to professionals as well as actually running groups for service users. With such direct experience, this reinforced Tony’s abundant enthusiasm and genuine belief in the multiple benefits seated exercise can have for a range of service users with varied disabilities.
Since completing the seated exercise course, I have been able to identify and recommend an increased number of service users to undertake such exercise and it has provided me with the ability to confidently outline the mental, physical, and social benefits such sessions can provide. As well as this, it enabled me to run a CPD session for my work colleagues. This involved facilitating my own seated exercise session, where my colleagues were also able to directly experience the activity themselves and as a result they have been able to apply this experience to their own work practice.
Furthermore, whilst I was on a university practical placement working with adults with learning disabilities, I identified a concern regarding the clients not undertaking a warm-up prior to participating in a particular physical activity. Due to the mixed range of abilities held by the group, I felt that a seated exercise warm-up would be very applicable. My practice placement educator allowed me to run a warm-up session and it was highly successful. As well as the exercises providing an effective warm-up, all the clients highlighted how they enjoyed the exercises, and I was later informed that the warm-up had actually now become standard practice at the beginning of each session.
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Vitalyz In-house SPA Workshops
Have a look at our COT endorsed, SPA workshops to help develop a training event that is unique and will meet your needs.
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Tony Duke is a BAOT associate & member of the Older People Specialist Section.
Specialist Sections are groups of OTs, students, support workers and other individuals in related fields who work to promote their area of common clinical interest.
