Emily Hwee has been helping older Australians live well in their homes for nearly two decades. The key, she says, is knowing what to look for before you even knock on the door.
“You start assessing before you’ve even met the person,” says Emily, an occupational therapist with the Juniper Home Care team. “I’m looking at the driveway, the walkways, how they access the home then checking if there are challenges with access that need to be addressed when I meet the customer”
Emily’s path to occupational therapy began whilst working on a high school project called the Kindness Movement in Singapore, where she was confronted with an aged care system that she felt had much room for improvement.
“There were no private rooms. Several residents had to share a room with curtain dividers for privacy and no air conditioning in a really humid climate. The staff were feeding them, caring for them physically, but the residents weren’t encouraged to actively engage in components of personal care activities that they could still do themselves,” she says.
The experience quietly shaped the direction she would take. When Emily discussed career options with her mother, her mother had read that occupational therapy was a growing field in supporting the booming need of older people in the decades to come, and that was enough to point her in the right direction. She enrolled at Curtin University, graduated in 2005, and the following year joined Juniper, based just down the road from where she had studied.
Her first placement was Cygnet Residential Aged Care Home at Juniper’s Rowethorpe Campus, developing skills to support residents to in pressure care management and postural support for residents who were chair and bed-dependent.
“I always tried to prioritise the person’s functional abilities,” she says. “And I had regular meetings with therapy assistants to ensure the activities were engaging. It doesn’t matter if a cake turns out looking like a mix between a biscuit and cake, what matters is that they were involved in making it.”
At one of the homes, an African themed week became a good example of this, when Emily helped coordinate a project that took months to build and paint a life-sized baby giraffe in a coordinated effort between Rowethorpe’s maintenance team who built the giraffe frame, and the therapy assistants who supported the residents to decorate and use the project as a talking point. .
“It was a real project. While the African themed event lasted only a week, in the months leading up to the completion of the giraffe, people had something to look forward to. Families would come in and talk about it,” she says. “Care staff would also use this project to engage the residents in conversation and encourage them to attend the site activities. It gave the residents something to work towards and look forward to.”
In 2011, Emily chaired the Golden Jubilee celebrations for Rowethorpe, coordinating all four residential homes to take part. On the day, residents ran stalls with site staff selling jams, flowers, clothing and crafts they had made themselves, families turned out in numbers, and bouncy castles were set up across the grounds.
“It was a joint effort,” she said. “It was lovely to see everyone come together like that.”
After more than a decade in Residential Aged Care, Emily spent several years working in rehabilitation with the Department of Health, community housing, NDIS and NDIA, before returning to Juniper in 2025. She now works across the metro area supporting people to remain safely and independently in their own homes.
The scope of the role, she says, often surprises people.
“A lot of people think OT is just about rehabilitation,” Emily says. “Few expect OTs realise we work with different trades people to modify their environment to support safety in the home and community.”
She described a customer who was highly independent, until she developed a medical condition that caused her hands to swell. She could no longer grip a door handle and grasp her keys, and during her condition flared up, the swelling would sometimes spread to her legs, and she would fall over as a result.
“We installed a smart lock that her family and the paramedics could access if she needed help,” Emily says. “It sounds small. But for her, it meant she could still access her own home whilst being safe.”
Similarly, a customer going through chemotherapy had been gripping her shower screen for balance when stepping down in the shower recess without realising.
“I prescribed a platform to create levelled entry access to the shower area,” Emily said. “Once it was there, she stopped grabbing the screen. She told me she hadn’t realised how anxious she had been about the fear of falling until the platform was installed.”
It is this attention to what goes unsaid, Emily explains, that plays such an important part of her work.
“People often adapt as they age and can sometime develop unsafe habits, such as holding onto shower screens and doorknobs for support.” she says. “Many don’t see an issue with grabbing onto unsafe surfaces as they have done this for years until a health professional talks them through the potential risks and discuss options such as using equipment aids or home modifications that support a safer means of engaging in their day-to-day activities while mitigating or minimising falls risks.”
Emily credits much of her professional growth to the people she has worked alongside at Juniper over the years, residential managers who supported her early development, therapy assistants who worked side-by-side with her in the development of an engaging activity program, and colleagues who shared their knowledge.
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