Program Overview

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Our MSc Occupational Therapy (pre-registration) programme helps you to develop the knowledge, skills and attributes to enable you to work with clients of all ages who have physical, mental health, learning difficulties, or social challenges to address. If you already have a degree, and have carried out some relevant experience, then this programme could be your route into occupational therapy. There's never been a better time to train as you can now apply for a £5000 grant that you won't need to pay back! There is also an extra £3000 funding available depending on your personal circumstances. You can find more information about eligibility and how to apply on the HSC Scholarships and Funding page. This pre-registration course is a two-year accelerated programme which enables you to take advantage of interprofessional learning (IPL), encouraging professionals to learn with and from each other – an understanding that helps to ensure you have the expertise to respond adequately and effectively to the complexity of your clients’ needs, and ensures that care is safe, seamless and of a high standard. Central to the philosophy of our programme is the value attached to ‘occupation’ and ‘activity’ as a means to achieving the health and wellbeing of individuals, which enhances their quality of life, thus enabling them to achieve their desired goals. The School of Health and Social Care is proud to work closely with our Service User Reference Group (SURG). SURG is made up of service users, carers, and volunteers who generously share their first-hand experiences of health and social care. We work collaboratively with SURG to design our courses to ensure that we truly are putting the needs of patients and clients at the heart of what we do. SURG are involved as part of our course application processes and often form part of our interview panels. This helps us to be confident that we are selecting the right applicants for the course and their future careers. SURG members also support the delivery of our teaching sessions and research activity, which means you’ll benefit from an insight into their lived experiences of living with a diagnosis, health condition, or circumstance. You’ll find that not only does your clinical knowledge expand, but your empathy, compassion and ability to advocate develops also. You can find out more about SURG by reading their blog here .

Placement Opportunities

In order to prepare you for the work-place and enrich your learning, we organise the practice placement education for you with multi-professional health care teams in a wide range of settings. You will gain experience of working as part of a multidisciplinary team with people who have physical, mental health, learning difficulties or social needs. Over a thousand hours will be spent in the practice environment, where you will apply the theory and practice of occupational therapy. Whilst on placement you will have an educator allocated to you, and contact with a member of the academic team. Placements encompass a variety of multidisciplinary health and social care settings based within the NHS, the Private Sector, Social Services, Voluntary Organisations and Primary Health Care Services. If you are already a registered occupational therapist, please see Continuing Professional Development on our Health and Social Care web pages. The cost of required uniform will be fully covered by the school. DBS and Occupational Health Checks This course requires a satisfactory Occupational Health Check and enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) Check (including child and adult barred list check) - both of these are organised by the University. Please contact our DBS team or Occupational Health team if you have any questions in relation to these checks. You will also be required to register for the DBS Update Service (information relating to this service can be found here ). You will need to register for this within 30 days of your DBS certificate being issues. The Update Service costs £13 per year, which the University will reimburse. You will need to keep the subscription to this Service active for the duration of your course. If you do not register for the Update Service within 30 days, or your registration lapses, and you later attend placement where this is a requirement, you will have to pay for a new DBS check, which will enable you to sign up to the Update Service. Please contact our DBS team if you have any questions relating to this. A satisfactory Overseas Criminal Record Check/Local Police Certificate is also required, in addition to a DBS Check, where you have lived outside of the UK in the last 5 years for 6 months or more. Further information about how to obtain an Overseas Criminal Record check can be found on the Gov.uk website . Mandatory Vaccinations As you may be aware, the UK government has now revoked legislation that requires all health and social care staff working in sites regulated by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) in England to be fully vaccinated against Covid-19. Whilst vaccination is not essential, we encourage our applicants and students to be fully vaccinated. Find out more about what this means for applicants to this course .

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Professional accreditation

Accredited by the Royal College of Occupational Therapists (RCOT) for the purpose of ensuring graduates are fit for the profession. Approved by the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) for the purpose of providing eligibility to apply for registration with the HCPC as an occupational therapist. Why we're great.

• Develop your practical skills with exclusive use of our dedicated occupational therapy labs.
• Our close links with clinicians in practice will strengthen your career prospects.
• Learn alongside our students from other health professions, gaining an interdisciplinary perspective.

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Our expert staff

A unique feature of our School is that most of our staff work or have worked within clinical practice. This enhances our grasp of the contemporary links between academic research, the major issues of the day and real-life practice. Occupational Therapy is taught by registered experienced staff with a variety of different backgrounds. We have expertise in the areas of dementia, psychoanalytic thinking ion occupational therapy, acute care, hand therapy, neurological conditions and green care. Specialist guest lecturers additionally lend external expertise to our academic staff. Full details of our staff can be found on our HSC Staff Profiles . We are delighted to be the first department in the University to have obtained the Athena Swan Silver Award for gender equality. This award recognises initiatives we have in place such as our mentorship system, our additional promotion of flexible work and study options, and our work to recognise the barriers to opportunity for BAME and LGBT members of our community.

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Specialist facilities

Within our School of Health and Social Care, we have a range of specialist clinical laboratories and IT facilities to assist you with the effective learning and acquisition of new skills; for students of our MSc Occupational Therapy, we have a specialist lab at our Colchester Campus which provides you with access to kitchen, bedroom, and wheelchair facilities to help develop your skills in helping people in the home. We also arrange off-site visits to farms, wheelchair services and other specialist external facilities to assist in your learning, and offer excellent physical and online resources in terms of libraries, computer labs, datasets, archives and other research materials.

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Your future

Successful completion of our MSc (Hons) Occupational Therapy programme leads to eligibility to apply for registration as an occupational therapist with the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) , which then allows you to practise as an occupational therapist in the UK, and become a professional member of the Royal College of Occupational Therapists . If you are an international student interested in working outside of the UK we would advise that you check registration procedures with the relevant professional body in that country. If you are an international student and you have already qualified in your home country as an Occupational Therapist, you may not need to complete this course to work as an Occupational Therapist in the UK. We recommend you contact the HCPC to explore your eligibility to work as a qualified Occupational Therapist in the UK. “Studying to be an occupational therapist was, in some ways, the most difficult but easiest decision I ever made! At 42 years of age, with a well-paid job and young children, giving up our family security seemed rather risky. Nevertheless, I knew I needed to work with people and do something purposeful, that made a difference." Susan McGill, MSc Occupational Therapy