Occupational therapists help people who have a problem due to disability or an illness. Occupational therapists (OTs) help people discover what they can do. They also find ways to help people do what they want to do – this might be living in their own home or driving a car or being able to go to the shops on their own.

Occupational therapists work in all sorts of places. This can be hospitals, people's own homes, clinics, schools, community centres. They might work for the NHS, for charities or in prisons. Occupational therapists work with every age of person right from the new born baby to the very old.

OTs could be doing a wide variety of different things – there are too many to list here, but here are just a few:

• rehabilitation – when people are helped to get better after an accident or an illness
• paediatrics – working with children
• environmental adaptation – when people's homes or work-places are changed so that someone with a disability can get in and around or to do what they need to do.

Your school environment may have been adapted; ramps may have been built, for instance, for people with wheelchairs.

There are many more ways an occupational therapist may help their patients.