Research progress: What’s going on?

All of the views and opinions expressed here are my own.

The textbook is here… Published 1 September 2025!

We’ve written a textbook! Although I couldn’t actually really believe it until I held the book in my hands – it’s now very real and I’m so excited to be able share this with the world.

I was absolutely bursting with everything I’d learned and couldn’t fit into the PhD, and was lucky enough to get a contract with Taylor & Francis (Routledge) to write a textbook about this. Thanks to sage advice from Apple (again, thank you!), who reminded me of how important it was to bring multiple perspectives together to enrich and broaden research, this book has grown to be an incredible collection. We have perspectives from Australia, Brazil, Canada, the Netherlands, New Zealand, South Africa, UK, and USA. There’s so much to share and we couldn’t cram everything in, but I hope it offers a strong foundation and platform for OTs all around the world to advocate for their role, be seen and recognised, and maybe even write their own book building on from this…? 

I hope it offers information that’s useful and validating for OTs and anyone else who’s curious. Please don’t be intimidated by the fact that it’s a textbook – or that the title indicates it’s for OTs. It’s a textbook full of diverse knowledge and evidence-based practice suggestions, written for those who need it – whoever that may be. If you’re curious and want to know more, then this book is for you.

If you’d like to buy a printed copy, please visit Booktopia. Or you’re after an e-book, you can do this through Routledge.

2022 update… the PhD is completed!

My PhD thesis was submitted in December 2021, and accepted on 11 May 2022. I’m officially Dr Slootjes now!! What an amazing feeling! I am so unbelievably grateful for the support I had to achieve this incredible challenge and academic rite of passage. My thesis is publicly now, and I’m so excited to share it.

Slootjes, H. (2022). The Role of Occupational Therapists in Perinatal Health [Doctoral thesis, La Trobe University]. Open Access at La Trobe (OPAL). https://doi.org/10.26181/19836172.v1. Click here to access via OPAL.

Research findings are available, and more are coming…

Thank you to all of the participants – and the many others along the way – who have generously offered and shared their time, experiences, thoughts, reflections, expertise and network connections to help me capture a snapshot of how occupational therapists are working in perinatal maternal health around the world.

I’m still drafting journal articles about the role of occupational therapists in perinatal health and matrescence at the moment, and can’t wait to get it out there!

Please check  the Presentation schedule page for details about upcoming presentations discussing this research.