Occupational Therapy
Occupational Therapy is a new support to Covenant House Vancouver. Introduced in 2025, the occupational therapist helps people build or regain skills needed in their daily life so they can achieve what they want. At CHV, this can look like a youth finding work, reducing their substance use, engaging in leisure activity, creating a routine, and/or finding community.
Their role also:
- Runs a variety of relevant life skill and harm reduction groups that focus on skill building for independent living (e.g. meal planning, cooking skills, developing coping strategies for anxiety), and reducing harm from substance use
- Takes a holistic approach to supporting each person and encourages ways to make change, in a non-judgemental way
- Assesses an individual’s physical, mental, spiritual, and cognitive abilities, to apply goals that meet youth at their level of abilities, and to understand what is limiting youth from completing their goals
- Provides a safe, non-judgemental, and educational space, to help youth develop a greater understanding of their substance use
The occupational therapist at Covenant House Vancouver works in our Foundations program and is connected to, and supported by, the Foundry.