Announcing OT Week and our annual campaign 2025-26

By: RCOT 02 July, 2025 News 5 minute read

This year’s campaign will highlight the value of occupational therapy in prevention and early intervention

The next annual campaign, launching in OT Week 2025 (3-9 November), will show how occupational therapists can help people to stay well for longer and avoid crises when they see them sooner - across all areas of practice and stages of life.

The campaign will aim to share the voices of people who give and receive occupational therapy, highlighting its positive impact. By doing so, we’ll raise public and political awareness of the profession’s value and show why early intervention from occupational therapy is key to building a healthier, more sustainable future for all. We want to help shift the focus of care from crisis-driven to prevention-focussed approaches.

We’ll support our members to talk consistently to their colleagues and contacts about how their work makes a difference in improving health and easing pressure on services when they get involved sooner. This includes occupational therapists in acute settings who help people successfully return home, preventing readmission.

Our Director of Practice and Innovation, Karin Orman, says:

This campaign is all about showing the difference occupational therapists make when they can provide early support for people. We want to support our members to talk to a range of different people about how their work helps people stay well and why that matters for the whole health and social care system. You’ll see real stories, practical examples and resources to use in your own work. By getting involved, you’ll help raise awareness, influence change and show the power of occupational therapy in action.

We’re working on a narrative for the campaign and resources for you to use. We’ll share these with you over the coming months. In the meantime, please do start thinking about how your role makes a difference to preventing people’s health getting worse, developing a crisis or being readmitted to hospital, and get in touch with us on hello@rcot.co.uk if you have a story to share.

Frequently asked questions

What's OT Week and the annual campaign?

OT Week is our week-long awareness event that happens each year to give occupational therapists across the UK the chance to shout about what they do and why it makes a difference. OT Week is also the start of our annual campaign, which this year will be about prevention and early intervention. We moved to this approach in 2024 to make a bigger impact by talking about the power of occupational therapy throughout the year.

Why prevention and early intervention?

When will you share resources?

There will be two sets of resources - one set about OT Week itself and one about the campaign.

We’ll share OT Week resources in July. These can be used to promote activities you’ll be running in OT Week and to use during the week itself.

The campaign resources, which will be about prevention and early intervention, will follow in September. These resources can be used both in OT Week and for the next 12 months.

What can we start doing now?

You can start by identifying the people you can influence and planning your activity for OT Week. Think about what stories you can tell about the work you do and the difference it makes. Begin building relationships with local decision-makers and maybe even start arranging meetings for the autumn.

Have a look at our profile-raising toolkit that has lots of suggestions for different things to do to raise the profile of occupational therapy. Between us, we want to speak to as many people as possible, in as many different settings as possible, so that people everywhere know about the life-changing power of occupational therapy – especially when people are able to access services as soon as they need them.

How is this relevant to acute settings?

There have been studies that show, for example, that having occupational therapists in emergency departments as part of the triage team can help people coming to A&E receive the treatment they need sooner and, in some cases, they won’t need to be admitted. This reduces pressures on other areas of the emergency services. Occupational therapists on hospital wards, when they’re able to do what they’re trained for, can help prevent people from returning to hospital by ensuring they have the right support at home, again reducing pressure on other areas of the NHS and social care.

Power of OT campaign