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Children’s perceptions of occupation within a trauma-capable therapeutic programme: A photo voice and photo elicitation study
Author: Lauren Iggo
Supervisors: Ema Tokolahi Rita Robinson
9 October 2025
Iggo, L. (2025). Children’s perceptions of occupation within a trauma-capable therapeutic programme: A photo voice and photo elicitation study [Master's thesis, Otago Polytechnic]. Research Bank. https://doi.org/10.34074/thes.7074
Abstract
This interpretive description study explored how children who have experienced adversity perceive occupation within a trauma-capable therapeutic programme in the Aotearoa New Zealand context. The study took place at a Stand Tū Māia site, which is a trauma-capable organisation specialising in supporting tamariki aged 5 to 13 years old and their whānau. Gaining the children’s voice was a priority in this study. Little research has been conducted with children exploring their perceptions of occupation, and even less research has been done with children who have experienced adversity within the Aotearoa New Zealand context, highlighting a gap in the existing occupational therapy literature.
Following ethics approval, six participants were recruited for the study, using convenience sampling over two recruitment periods. The participants were children who were already attending the Therapeutic Care and Education (TCE) programme during the two intended data collection periods. Creative methods, including photo-voice and photo-elicitation, were employed alongside semi-structured interviews, which were audio-recorded and transcribed. The six-phased process of reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2022) was used to analyse the data.
Three main themes: occupational engagement, occupational experience, and connection emerged from the data, along with additional sub-themes of just-right challenge, empowerment, positive experiences, positive emotions, and connection with peers, staff, and family. The occupational therapy framework of do, be, become, belong (Wilcock & Hocking, 2015) was used to discuss the research findings. The study revealed that the children perceive the occupations they engage in within the Stand Tū Māia TCE programme as play. These play experiences were met with the children experiencing the just right challenge, which provided a positive experience for the participants. These positive experiences of occupation elicited positive emotions in the participants, while also connecting them to the Stand Tū Māia staff, their peers, and their whānau. Several practice implications can be drawn from the study findings to help inform the delivery and understanding of the use of occupation within this setting. These include the importance of practitioner education, the intentional use of play-based occupations, placing importance on the inter-relational elements of participation in occupation, and occupational therapy appears to be a profession that is well-placed in this setting. This study has provided valuable insight into how children who have experienced adversity perceive occupation within a trauma-capable therapeutic programme in Aotearoa New Zealand. Children who have experienced multiple adversities perceive occupation within a trauma-capable therapeutic programme as a positive experience where they can play and do well in these play activities. The findings suggest that participants perceive their engagement in occupation at Stand Tū Māia as an opportunity for them to be successful, feel empowered, experience positive emotions, and feel connected to their peers, staff and family. Using creative and child-centred approaches, the children’s voices were heard, with the findings indicating that feeling positive and successful within occupations plays a crucial role in promoting well-being, empowerment, and connection for children who have experienced adversity. This highlights the importance of trauma-capable environments like Stand Tū Māia, which utilise occupational engagement as a therapeutic tool with children. These findings contribute to the limited body of occupational therapy literature focused on children’s perspectives of occupation within the context of adversity and trauma.
Keywords
Therapeutic Care and Education (TCE) programme, occupational engagement, occupational experience, connection, perception of occupation, trauma-capable environments
Licence
This thesis is publicly available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
