2022-2023 Wise Webinar Series

  How Occupational Therapy is Preparing Me for a Return to Work

When Covid hit, the employment landscape for people with disabilities changed in ways that are still making a return to the workplace challenging for many. Join Niko as he shares how his employment was affected in the early days of the pandemic, and how he found ways to grow and prepare for a return to work despite those challenges

Learning Objectives

• The Covid pandemic has negatively affected the employment of people with disabilities in both income and quality of life
• It’s important to think “outside the box” when it comes to preparing someone for employment/return to work
• Occupational therapy is not just for kids! It can help adults too

 Niko Boskovic

Niko Boskovic [he/him] is a nonspeaking autistic man living in Portland, Oregon who relies on a letterboard for communication. He graduated high school in 2019 with a regular diploma and is pursuing his Associates degree at Portland Community College. Before high school, he was made to do a lot of therapy to treat his autism, including years of ABA therapy, but the biggest game changer was when he was taught to communicate through spelling at age 11. Since then, he has dedicated himself to writing about life as a nonspeaking autistic and finds that he is best able to express his lived experience through poetry. Niko is a columnist for Spectrum Life Magazine (https://www.spectrumlife.org/blog), and wrote a monthly blog for Oregon Council on Developmental Disabilities for four years (https://www.ocdd.org/nikos-blog/). He regularly presents at conferences, and has presented at numerous virtual events. He has had poetry published in Montana Mouthful (2020); Lunch Ticket’s Amuse-Bouche: Spotlight (2019); In Parentheses Magazine (Fall 2020); The Pointed Circle (2021), Media Rites The ISM Youth Files, 2022; and Kind Writers Magazine (August 2022).