I am excited to listen to your podcast with Jayson! I enjoy his blogs and the work he has been doing to help OTs calculate their workload. I do agree with you that the term workload may have a negative tone, it kind of connotates feelings of " too much, heavy" etc - but caseload does too…it is the load part of the compund word that adds the negative tones. I’m with you that we need to create a positive term to describe the scope of our work!
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Jayson is so fun to talk to! I think you can tell on the episode that I’m smiling almost the whole time I’m talking to him!! 
@Jayson_Davies_OTRL I think you need to rebrand the “workload” movement for us to something more aspirational!
I also think you should set an awesome goal for this movement like Lindsey Vestal has for pelvic health! (Let em know if there is anyway I can help make this happen!)
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I think I found those projects after I started.
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I believe that in order to get better at grant writing it is something that more OT programs should incorporate. Some of my classmates in their capstones wrote 20 or more grants while others did not touch on the subject. There is such a wide variety in the knowledge base that if we could streamline abilities it may help fund the movements to advance our profession.
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I second some of the ideas that @SarahLyon put forth such as re branding the name of “workload approach” as the existing term does not aptly describe how it is not about decreasing workload but just compensating OTs for work they already do. I have not worked as a school OT, but as someone who observed during a therapeutic recreation course and shadowed several school based-OTs I did see a trend of more pull-out one on one services. I have known special education teachers who are well-aware of OT practices and seem to already be implementing approaches within their room but then regular education teachers are the ones pushing for pull-out services. As for the argument that there are increasing size caseloads and a workload approach would not allow school OTs the time for 41-60 clients if the school based OT could get more time reimbursed for instructing educators, writing grants, and working with clubs and support groups then there may be less need for 1:1 caseload time. Though each individual child deserves services and time it just is getting to not be feasible, especially as more and more kids are behind because of the long-lasting effects of COVID quarantine. Adapting schools to better serve their students is going to be more beneficial in the long run and that happens by OTs being able to write grants for more adaptive seating options, OTs teaching handwriting courses, and OTs doing research on how their work is making long-lasting changes. Additionally I would hope for more communication between outpatient OT providers and school based OTs to ascertain how the child is performing in different contexts and encourage transference of skills. Thank you for bringing up this topic and I learned a great deal from this discussion!
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Three more articles discussing the role of OT in RTI/MTSS, and then AOTA document on RTI.
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I whole heartedly agree with you! Great post!
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Fully agree all these points, but need to use vocabulary of administrators … workload is not intuitive to OTs.
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Oooo- that is such a good point. I fully agree- we should use whatever language the person we are talking to would use.
Such a good article and wonderful discussion. Really glad that we are looking at offering services that go beyond seeing the child as the problem that needs intervention. We do soooo much more than that - I do agree that when we go beyond this it get more complicated and complex, hence making it harder to communicate and justify.
I have done a lot of thinking on the idea of top down and bottom up models or ways of working and I believe that there is another option outside of these two, that being an identity-led approach. One where we begin with the child’s identity (their history, the stories that they tell themselves, their strengths and interests) and from this as our starting place we can make some hypothesis on where to go next (this could be upwards or downwards, if thinking about the old top-down vs. bottom-up thinking).
Anyhoo, thanks for sharing and I like where this is going - it is super complex and I know that the schools have their own things that are important, as do teachers, parents, government and whoever else BUT I think that when we lead with identity we have the kids best interests in mind and can move forwards in a holistic way bringing solutions beyond fixing the kids to fit into the school.
Yep. I’ll stop there 