Spotlight on Exhibitions: The Care and Occupational Therapy Show

On the 12^th of July, Living Made Easy attended The Care and Occupational Therapy Show at the Westpoint Arena in Exeter, as exhibitors. In attendance was Sarai, Partnership Manager for the South, our Senior Occupational Health Practitioner Aly, Publicity Officer Olivia and Occupational Health Service Lead Rachel, who were all on the stand to answer questions whilst also visiting other exhibitors.

The team were also joined by Shelley who is our Director of Health and Wellbeing, and Head of Health and Wellbeing, Caroline, who gave a powerful speech on Living with Hidden Disabilities. 

The team were very excited to set up the stand which included our new banners detailing our training opportunities, our AskSARA product, and the other services we offer. We were extremely happy with the way our stand was presented using our new brand colours, coupled with our healthy offering of free fruit for attendees! We also had use of a TV screen to feature a rolling slideshow with further information of what we offer at Living Made Easy. 

Our Partnership Manager Sarai, along with OHS Lead Rachel, did a fantastic job of heading up the stand for most of the day, and were there to answer any questions from attendees and other exhibitors. They were delighted to get so much interest regarding our training opportunities as this is an area we are continuing to develop. There were many questions about bookings for our accredited Trusted Assessor training, which is something we have offered for a number of years now, as well as Mental Health First Aid and our newest training offer, Trauma Informed Care. Sarai and Rachel also had questions from professionals and OHPs regarding our bespoke training offer. They were able to gather details as to what specifically they were looking for, so that they were able to feed this back to our training team for them to start building the bespoke training package. Shelley and Caroline also spent time on the stand throughout the day, they were fantastic at offering their expert advice and knowledge.

Senior Occupational Health Practitioner, Aly, spent most of the day making valuable connections with new manufacturers and organisations who were also exhibiting. Aly was focused and driven on finding out about products that can help to grow the new areas of our database, such as sensory, memory and children’s products. One of Aly’s highlights was speaking with Milbotix, who are a new company who develop smart socks. The smart socks are designed to be worn by individuals with varying communication difficulties, to alert those caring for them when they are showing early signs of distress, therefore allowing care givers to provide an intervention. Aly could see how this product would be fantastic for non-verbal individuals or for individuals with dementia, and she was keen to make a connection with Milbotix to list them on our database when their product is on the market.  

The team also spoke with organisations and charities such as the Devon Parentship NHS Trust and Andy’s Man Club. Andy’s Man Club are a men’s suicide prevention charity who do brilliant work, up and down the UK, to offer support to those that need it. It was great that the team were able to chat to the representatives to get a further understanding of the support they offer, to hopefully be able to work with them in the future and signpost people to them on our website. 

The team were able to have a short break away from the stand to see our Head of Health and Wellbeing, Caroline’s, seminar on Living with Hidden Disabilities, which is a topic is she very passionate about. During the thirty-minute seminar, Caroline delivered an engaging and powerful speech focusing on the importance of what we know about hidden disabilities and how we support the individual. To make her speech accessible to audience members from the deaf community, Caroline also brought along BSL interpreter, Sarah. Caroline covered topics such as the definition of a non-visual disability and how many people are affected, the aftermath of covid on access to services, what a dynamic disability is, and much more. She ended the speech with a case study of a time in her career in which she had experienced witnessing an individual, who had disclosed their hidden disability to a professional, not being valued or treated as a whole person. This was an emotive end to her seminar and was certainly thought-provoking. For the rest of the afternoon we had many attendees coming over to our stand to discuss Caroline’s seminar, and to say how much they had enjoyed hearing her speak. 

The team at Living Made Easy love to attend conferences as exhibitors as it gives us the opportunity to showcase to professionals and the public what we do and what we are about. It’s really beneficial for us to attend these events, not only for our own continued professional development, but for us to be able to continue building what we offer as an organisation. By speaking to professionals, such as Occupational Health Practitioners, Occupational Therapists, and the public, we get firsthand knowledge on what products they’d like to see offered on AskSara and our database, as well as what training professionals are most interested in. 

The next show we are exhibiting at will be The Occupational Therapy Show on the 22^nd and 23^rd of November at the NEC in Birmingham. We are looking forward to having Caroline with us again to deliver another seminar, and to being able to showcase more new training opportunities and products…watch this space.