Recreational Therapy for Canadian Children with Special Needs
Canadian children with special needs have the right to participate in recreational activities and play like any other individual. According to Keiko Shikako-Thomas et al. (2019), over 200,000 Canadian children have special needs (1). Recreational therapy increases their capabilities to function and independence by participating in creative arts, logic games, adventure programs, sports, or dance for holistic wellness. Several actions can be taken because of the existence of numerous opportunities for implementing them in Canada.
Canadian children with special needs can have more fun during leisure through pet therapy, adaptive swimming, miracle league, music therapy, and art therapy by taking different actions and available options facilitating their implantation.
Pet therapy is a recreational therapy for Canadian children with special needs. Individuals with medical conditions and disabilities can freely be visited by certified therapy animals and trained handlers according to a child’s unique needs (Carter & Van Andel, 2019). Alternatively, one may opt to acquire pets for the child since caring for a pet is one of the most incredible ways to help Canadian children with special needs develop social skills, life skills, and memory skills. According to a recently published study, scholars at the University of Queensland in Australia demonstrated a significant increase in social approaches, tactile contact, laughing, talking, and smiling when children with autism played with two guinea pigs (Carter & Van Andel, 2019). The animals enable children with special needs to start asking an empathetic question like what guinea pigs think, why they behave in a certain way, what they want, and ways of taking care of them. Thus, families should adopt pets for recreational therapy, depending on every pet’s advantages and disadvantages.
Similarly, adaptive swimming recreational therapy for children with special needs can be embraced in Canada to promote children’s leisure participation. Swimming emphasizes safety, low-impact workout opportunities and accessibility, sensory integration benefits, and safety (Woodmansee et al., 2016). It provides substantial benefits, including social interaction, exercise, and fun to children with special needs during leisure by giving them the necessary water safety and independent swimming techniques. Adapted aquatics improves the children’s self-esteem, increases their endurance and strength while giving them freedom of movement. Children can enroll for swimming lessons at various public pools, which they should visit to find out if facilities like wheelchairs, the pool’s typical temperature, and zero-depth entrance.
The miracle league is another ideal recreational therapy for Canadian children with special needs. Miracle league enables children with special needs to spend their leisure while gaining skills for playing baseball in over 250 organizations specializing in Miracle League in Canada, the USA, Australia, and Puerto Rico (Woodmansee et al., 2016). The organizations’ fields are accessible to Canadian children who may be willing to engage in competitive or non-competitive leagues. The recreational therapy transforms the children while changing the community’s fabric as people learn to see the players as individuals without disability but different abilities. Miracle League enables children to have fun while educating the community in its entirety as it gives children an opportunity of doing things people think they can never do.
Music therapy recreational therapy can facilitate the enjoyment of leisure by Canadian children with special needs. Upon enrolling for music therapy, therapists get an opportunity of incorporating their social-adaptive and speech goals into each session (Carter & Van Andel, 2019). Accordingly, music therapy leads to the achievement of verbal requests, visual tracking, manipulation of the fine motor of musical instruments, turn-taking, matching patterns and rhythms, and conversational exchanges. Thus, music therapy motivates the children by giving therapists an opportunity of assessing their emotional well-being, communication abilities, physical health, cognitive skills, and social functioning through children’s musical responses. The therapist can then design music therapy sessions for Canadian children depending on their needs through music improvisation, songwriting, receptively listening to music, imagery and music, and lyric discussion.
Likewise, art therapy is another crucial recreational therapy for children with special needs. Art therapists are mental health professionals using a person’s innate creativity in visual arts for social skills development and self-awareness to manage their emotional conflicts and behaviors (Carter & Van Andel, 2019). Art therapy improves or restores a child’s well-being and functioning during individual or group sessions by eliciting their inherent art-making capacity, enhancing their emotional, mental, and physical well-being. Therefore, art therapy integrates physical and mental health to enrich the children’s lives through human experience, creative process, and active art-making in a psychotherapeutic relationship.
Canadian communities and organizations should take various actions for enhanced recreational therapy among children with special needs. Gyms and city parks need adaptive architectural changes besides providing leisure devices enhancing accessibility and inclusion (Shikako-Thomas et al., 2019). Capacity-building among community park staff is also necessary for improved specialists’ availability to inform and train Canadian children with special needs, families, and relevant community organizations. Funding support should also be provided, and regulations for community spaces like theaters, libraries, and gyms enforced to ensure that their buildings are adapted to all Canadian children’s needs. Community members, including the children’s siblings and parents, also need incentives like time-spent stipends, transportation cost tax write-offs, and reduced or free membership provisions for their participation in the same leisure activity as their child to foster family participation and mentorship. Canadian university and high school students can also facilitate capacity building by volunteering their skills to support the children’s leisure participation. Such volunteer activities can count towards their course credits, practicums, and coops.
Canadians should consider several factors while implementing the above recreational therapy for children with special needs. First, funding allocations in the social service and public health sectors for providing adaptive equipment, paying specialists’ services, and adapting infrastructure to the children’s needs should be kept in mind (Shikako-Thomas et al., 2019). Workforce constraints may also emerge in Canadian community recreational centers, limiting their practical engagement with children with special needs. Workflow programs, building designs, and staff capacity for improving the children’s participation in leisure should also be considered (Shikako-Thomas et al., 2019). Intersectional partnerships should also be built to implement participation improvement policies. The considerations can enable Canadian children with special needs to access recreational therapy and enjoy leisure across health, social, community living, and education sectors through various opportunities.
Canada has several opportunities for implementing different types of recreational therapy for children with special needs. For instance, Canada’s British Columbia has a unique opportunity to serve as a national champion for inclusive communities and children’s rights (Shikako-Thomas et al., 2019). BC can become the most inclusive province through political will and adoption of the BC 2024 accessibility plan to create inclusive communities by promoting leisure and the children’s participation in recreational activities (Shikako-Thomas et al., 2019). According to UN Sustainable Development Goals, the increased international focus on equity and inclusion is another opportunity for BC to implement different recreational therapies and facilitate the participation of children with special needs by increasingly recognizing Canada’s rights-based approaches like the Convention on the child’s rights.
Children with special needs should enjoy their leisure, and Canada has several opportunities for making that a reality. Families should enjoy pet therapy, adaptive swimming, miracle league, music therapy, and art therapy with the children to create inclusive communities and develop social skills, life skills, and memory skills. Swimming can also help recreational therapy emphasize safety, low-impact workout opportunities and accessibility, sensory integration benefits, and safety. Miracle League can also help the children gain skills to play baseball to change the community’s fabric as people learn not to see the players as individuals with special needs but different abilities. Music therapy also leads to the achievement of verbal requests, visual tracking, manipulation of a fine motor of musical instruments, turn-taking, matching patterns and rhythms, and conversational exchanges in the children. Art therapy also integrates physical and mental health to enrich the children’s lives through human experience, creative process, and active art-making in a psychotherapeutic relationship. Canadians can enhance their recreational therapy through capacity building, funding support, and community incentives. However, factors like funding allocations, workforce constraints, and Intersectional partnerships should be considered while implementing various recreational therapy options. Canada has several opportunities for implementing different types of recreational therapy for children with special needs.
References
Carter, M. J., & Van Andel, G. E. (2019). Therapeutic recreation: A practical approach. Waveland press.
Shikako-Thomas, K., Majnemer, A., Mogo, E., Lai, J., Kalaba, M., Symigon, V., et al. (2019). Promoting the Participation of Children with Disabilities in Leisure Activities.
Woodmansee, C., Hahne, A., Imms, C., & Shields, N. (2016). Comparing participation in physical recreation activities between children with disability and children with typical development: A secondary analysis of matched data. Research in developmental disabilities, 49, 268-276.