Category: Archive

[ezcol_2third]At the 5th General Assembly in Vienna Anne Lawson Porter resigned as Vice President of COTEC.

We are very grateful for everything she has done for COTEC in her four-years term as VP. She has been a wonderful colleague, a great chair and moderator of meetings and a person who asked us the right questions at the right moment. She stimulated us to reflect on our actions and challenged us to think strategically and enabled us to phrase our thoughts in “proper” English. Her contribution to COTEC and the development of OT-EU and ROTOS is conclusive.

On behalf of the General Assembly Members and the Executive Committee we thank her and wish her well!

We welcome Naomi Hankinson as new Vice President of COTEC and are looking forward to working with her in the COTEC Executive Committee.[/ezcol_2third] [ezcol_1third_end][/ezcol_1third_end]

The 6th European Seating Symposium will take place 13-15 June 2018 at the Trinity College Dublin. The conference aims towards professionals, manufacturers and users of seating and assistive technologies. Abstracts can be submitted until 27 November 2017. Visit the following website for more information:

Abstract Submissions

The World Federation of Occupational Therapists (WFOT) is undertaking a survey of occupational therapy practitioners about the access and use of Assistive Technology. The responses will inform WFOT’s engagement strategy with the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Global Cooperation on Assistive Technology (GATE) project and the formulation of resources to support occupational therapy education, practice and research.

The survey can be accessed here https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/WFOTAT2017

Your feedback and participation would be greatly appreciated by the 1st October 2017.

Early bird fees are available until 30 June 2017. To register, visit Alzheimer Europe’s website:

The Executive Committee of COTEC is very pleased to have signed the joint statement on Mental Health for the EU Health Policy Forum with 20 other signatories.

The European Framework for Action on Mental Health and Wellbeing, which gathered together the lessons learned during the Joint Action, provides a roadmap for improving and promoting mental health. The 20 signatories to this joint-statement would like to see a concerted effort to follow on from the Joint Action and Framework, and gather a broad coalition of organisations who wish to support the improvement of mental health through European policies with a specific focus on four areas:

The signatories urge the European Institutions to:

1. Ensure parity of esteem, the principle by which mental health must be given equal priority to physical health.
2. Take a life-course approach to mental health.
3. Pay stronger attention to mental health in the workplace, because – while occupational health and safety policies and legislation have overwhelmingly focused on physical risk factors and physical injury, poor performance due to mental health issues is one of the biggest problems in the modern workplace.
4. Improve mental health treatment in primary care

Read the full statement here