Meet Joyce! The newest member of the Oasis Residential Services team, Joyce is bringing a unique set of services to the community: Occupational Therapy.

Joyce describes Occupational Therapy (OT) as a “doing therapy” that looks at meaningful, productive activities that can occupy someone’s time. Examples include eating, showering, getting dressed, and also work-related tasks or even hobbies.

In her day to day at the Villages, she asks herself how she can help residents incorporate these kinds of activities in a way that can help them meet health and wellness goals.

Joyce’s work is about promoting independence in self-care, productive activities, and even leisure activities, and this isn’t entirely new to the Villages. For several years now, we have partnered with the OT program at CSU Dominguez Hills, and this has brought new cohorts of OT interns to the community every spring and fall semester.

These students regularly fill the CVC calendar with activity groups, such as cooking, arts and crafts, and sensory and self groups that promote independence in health and wellness, for example: a cooking group that perhaps a resident with diabetes might enjoy as a meaningful and productive activity while helping them improve physical health.

OTs often work in hospital settings helping individuals in recovery or in school settings working with children with special needs or sensory deficits. At the Villages at Cabrillo, OT has traditionally been charged with taking on the role of health promotion, engaging residents in health and wellness activities, and working as an addition to a larger care team supporting an individual’s transition into stable housing.

In her role, Joyce also finds herself acting as an advocate for residents who may have underlying cognitive deficits that might otherwise go unnoticed, such as Hoarding Disorder or anxiety. She is currently working alongside our Property Management team and Case Management teams, supporting residents who are being temporarily relocated while their units are renovated.

There can be a great deal of fear and anxiety attached to a large change like this, and Joyce’s role in supporting residents by making changes to daily habits and routines that can help them better prepare for the move is critical.

“I’ve always known I wanted to end up working in a healing profession,” – Joyce

Joyce added that she has developed a huge passion for health promotion and for primary care, which deals quite a bit with the daily habits and routines that impact health. As an OT, she gets to go right to the source – those habits and routines – and help people make meaningful, lasting changes that can lead to significant health improvements.

We are so excited to have Joyce at the Villages, and in the short time since she joined the CVC team, she has already made a huge impact for the betterment of the community. Thank you, Joyce!

And thank you, to Boeing Global Engagement, for providing us with a $100,000 award at the end of last year, which allowed us to add Joyce to our team.