In the future, the relative decline in the number of the workers will bring challenges to the working life, which re-quires that the widest possible range of labor input should be introduced in the labor market. Occupational therapy is still little utilized by promoting employment and unemployment preventive services, even though the assessment and promotion of work ability is a one of the key skills of occupational therapists. The purpose of this study was to produce data on the employment of occupational therapists and investigate the benefits of an occupational therapist at the services in the social employment sector. The aim of this study was to investigate the employment of the occupational therapists in the social employment sector and examine their views on the usability of occupational therapy in a given industry. The study was commissioned by the Honkalampi Foundation KASKI job coaching under Valtone project (2013 - 2015), which is targeted for people of 18 - 45 years of age suffering from neuropsychiatric specific problems. Neuropsychiatric training and occupational therapy were the work-oriented working methods that were used in the project.The aim of the project was to create, among other things, methods for the preparation for the labor market. During the project it turned out that there were clear benefits from the expertise of occupational therapy and the client wished research and development, contributing to the use of occupational therapists in social employment sector. It was decided to explore this issue through the survey methods and the aim of the survey methods was to find out how occupational therapeuts in Finland who work in social employment sector experience the benefits of their profession in this working field. The aim of the thesis is to highlight the ways in which the em-ployment of occupational therapist to this working field can be promoted.

A multi- methodical approach i.e. the triangulation was the approach to this research and and the survey was car-ried out by an online questionnaire to the members of Occupational Therapy Association through the TOI-net mailing list. A cover letter was aimed to reach occupational therapists who work in the social employment sector i.e. the target group of the study. 15 of the 23 survey responses were suitable for analysis. The survey consisted of open- and multiple-choice questions. The material of open questions was analyzed by classifying, dividing themes and categorizing. Multiple-choice questions were analyzed using statistical methods and the results are illustrated in tables and in figures. On the basis of the survey there are occupational therapists who work in different services of the social employment sector in Finland and their job description matches their education. According to the respondents, the employment of the occupational therapists in the social employment sector can be promoted by effective marketing, bolder job search, through work contacts of education and through making more occupational therapy research in this area. Occupational therapists experienced that the education benefits are professional skills, practical methods, a paradigm and perspective, as well as cross-disciplinary knowledge base.