Supports and practices for daily living

Getting Young Adults Moving by Supporting Participation and Access to Recreation Centres

We launched GYM-SPARC, a research project that facilitates inclusion of young adults with disability in gyms.

Young Autistic adults report that having social support enhances their confidence and helps them feel supported in a gym environment.

The GYM-SPARC program lays out 8 social support strategies targeted at fitness professionals (fitness trainers, gym owners and health professionals) to assist young adults with disability get the most out of their gym session.

GYM-SPARC created educational resources and practical advice specifically designed for fitness professionals who are interested in improving the gym experience for young adults with a disability.

Read more on the GYM-SPARC website

Funding: VicHealth Impact Research Grant Initiative in partnership with La Trobe University

Supporting self-regulation

We conducted a pilot study of a novel way of working together among occupational therapists (OT), teachers, and OT students - The Alert Program® - in two rural primary schools in Bendigo (St Peter's and Kallianna) and one secondary school in Swan Hill (Swan Hill College), to enhance the wellbeing of Victorian school children in regional and rural areas.

Through The Alert Program® children learn to recognise their own 'alert' states using the metaphor of a car engine - too fast, just right, or too slow - and adjust those 'alert' states using sensory and movement strategies depending on what is required to support their learning at school.

We trained OTs, teachers, and OT students to co-deliver the Alert Program® over one school term through a single weekly 45-minute session in the classroom and assessed its impact on students wellbeing using an innovative game-based tool called Rumble's Quest. This tool enables students to respond to questions about their wellbeing while playing a fun, quest-based video game.

This pilot study is the first time the classroom approach has been formally evaluated in rural/regional Victoria. Our data indicate that at least 30% of students attending the three schools showed wellbeing concerns before the start of the program.

Preliminary student outcomes:

The program improved students' executive function, supporting their self-regulation and enhancing engagement with learning. Success at school is likely to improve the wellbeing of all students but especially vulnerable learners, such as Autistic students and those with trauma backgrounds.

Teacher’s evaluation of the program:

We interviewed participating teachers to understand the program’s acceptability and effectiveness. Teachers discussed how the program offers universal benefits to students and teachers, and the specific factors they felt were important for the program to be successful.

Benefits described:

• greater understanding of self-regulation (teacher and student),
• development of a shared language they could continue to use in the classroom.

Teachers reported that communication was very important to create cohesion between the teachers and the occupational therapist. Whilst teachers found the training useful, they also called for greater involvement, through co-development and co-facilitation of the program.

Funding: Kalon Salter Bequest

We conducted an evaluation of JettProof compression singlets and their effect on the self- regulation of Autistic children. We completed a review of literature and a small pilot study including six Autistic children.

Because of the strong, preliminary support for using compression for self-regulation, the project team strongly suggests doing more research that addresses current research problems and tries to discover how compression affects self-regulatory processes. The project results generally support the idea that compression and similar therapies may be a safe and effective way to improve self-regulation in some Autistic children who have sensory processing difficulties. However, this project also showed that it is not possible to draw clear conclusions about how well compression therapies work in this situation because:

• the effects are different and very personal
• researchers need to conduct more studies on specific, individual therapies in controlled settings
• the quality of the research so far is affected by small numbers of participants, different therapeutic methods, different outcome measures, and poorly described participant groups.

Funding: AusIndustry, Commonwealth Department of Industry, Science and Resources