Introduction / Background
Specialist Disability Accommodation (SDA) home ownership is an emerging pathway within the NDIS that allows participants to buy or build their own SDA-compliant property, with loan repayments made through SDA funding. While still relatively new, this model opens significant opportunities for occupational therapists to support participants seeking greater choice, control, and stability in their living arrangements.

Method / Implementation
This presentation outlines the SDA home ownership process from an OT perspective including assessing SDA eligibility, identifying functional housing needs, and aligning environmental recommendations with the SDA Design Standard. Through practical examples, attendees will explore how to collaborate effectively with housing providers and SDA accredited assessors, ensuring participant goals remain central throughout each stage of design and planning.

Discussion / Outcomes
Using real-world case examples, the session highlights how OTs can apply clinical reasoning to evaluate long-term suitability, accessibility, and sustainability of housing solutions. It also explores strategies for supporting goal-setting and community participation, and communicating evidence-based housing recommendations that inform both design and funding outcomes.

Conclusion
SDA home ownership represents a rapidly expanding, yet underutilised opportunity for OT involvement. By understanding the process and potential of this model, occupational therapists can confidently guide participants to achieve greater independence and long-term housing security.

Background: Existing literature of return to daily occupations after an Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest (OHCA) mostly explores paid employment and personal occupations. To best support OHCA survivors, understanding the return to a much broader range of occupations is needed.

This study aimed to describe the occupational performance of adult OHCA survivors across daily occupations following hospital discharge.

Method: A mixed-methods prospective cohort study of OHCA survivors admitted to a Victorian cardiac hospital between December 2024 and May 2025.

Pre-OHCA occupational performance was established as a baseline, then reassessed at one-, three- and twelve-months post discharge using the Functional Autonomy Measurement System and the Community Integration Questionnaire-Revised. Semi-structured interviews with thematic analysis were undertaken to explore barriers, supports and satisfaction with returning to occupations, and identify unmet support needs.

Outcomes: Eighteen participants were interviewed. Participants mostly achieved pre-OHCA performance in self-care and instrumental occupations by three months post-discharge. Sleep, employment, and participation in social, leisure, and community occupations were most impacted. Driving restrictions were often a barrier to regaining independence, and sometimes restricted access to follow-up care. Patients without follow-up reported greater health management challenges; those who accessed support reported high levels of satisfaction.

Conclusions: Results emphasise the importance of an Occupational Therapy (OT) referral for all OHCA survivors. OTs should focus on individualised assessment and follow-up for return to daily occupations, including community reintegration, employment, driving alternatives, and accessing health information and services. Future research should explore supporting sleep, and mitigating factors to accessing employment, healthcare, and the community.

Introduction:
Comfort, confidence, and participation can be limited not by a person’s abilities, but by the wheelchair prescribed. In clinical practice, wheelchairs that are not thoughtfully matched to the individual can lead to fatigue, pain, and barriers to community engagement. Contributing factors include inconsistent assessment, limited trial opportunities, and suboptimal prescription processes, all of which affect fit and participation outcomes. This presentation highlights how a wheelchair clinic model applying a person-centred and collaborative approach can address these challenges to transform outcomes.

Implementation:
The wheelchair clinic service combines comprehensive assessment, hands-on trials, team collaboration, and shared decision-making to ensure that prescriptions are functional, safe, and individualised. The three-step process includes in-depth home assessments, detailed clinic-based evaluations and trials, and in-home practical application to verify suitability in real-world contexts. Feedback from clients and families, Occupational Therapists implementing the service, and wheelchair representatives involved in the process was used to inform understanding of outcomes achieved through the wheelchair clinic model.

Discussion:
Feedback from clients and families indicated high satisfaction with the personalised client-centred process, while Occupational Therapists valued the structured clinical framework and collaborative decision-making. Product representatives highlighted improved client outcomes through greater product access and enhanced service efficiency.

Conclusion:
This fast-paced session invites clinicians to reconceptualise wheelchair prescription, not as a product choice, but as a partnership that enables people to live, move, and participate fully. Attendees will gain practical insights into the wheelchair clinic model and strategies to enhance functional, client-centred outcomes.

Functional Capacity Assessments were once brief and focused. Under the NDIS, assessment time has expanded and reports can exceed forty pages, increasing cost and delay. Clinicians extended assessment processes with good intentions, aiming to help participants secure the best possible plan. This presentation outlines the Streamlined Functional Capacity Assessment Model, an efficient approach that produces clear and practical reports in around twelve pages with 3.8 hours of clinician time. The model preserves funding for therapy and keeps information centred on functional participation.

Background
Expanded expectations have created long waitlists, higher costs and reports that are difficult for families and planners to use. Many clients already engaged in therapy have established participation patterns, allowing functional capacity to be described more efficiently.

Method
The model is used with clients who have attended therapy for at least eight weeks or four sessions, allowing information to be triangulated across observations, carer input and targeted assessment. Clinicians use observed participation, online tools, structured templates and consistent operating procedures. Reports are concise and goal focused, linking functional needs, helpful supports and recommendations. Optional add on assessments or therapy outcome sections can be included.

Outcomes
Clinicians report improved accuracy and reduced assessment time. Families receive timely, readable reports, with the advantage of two months of therapy and an FCA for a similar cost to a single lengthy FCA alone. Support planners receive concise and actionable information.

Conclusion
This model provides an efficient and practical way to complete functional capacity assessments while maintaining clarity and relevance.