Valuing Diversity: Therapeutic Recreation and Physical and Developmental Disabling Conditions

The following global ideas guide the design and delivery of this course:

Disabling Conditions:

• Changes and its impact on the child, adolescent, and adult
• Adjustment to disability theory
• Stress and its management
• Developmental disabilities: autism, mental retardation, fetal alcohol syndrome, cerebral palsy, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, learning disabilities
• Respiratory disorders: asthma, cystic fibrosis
• Physical impairments: obesity, eating disorders
• Neurological impairments: acquired brain injury, multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injury,
• Life altering and threatening illnesses: cancer, chronic pain
• Ethnicity, gender, cultural and socioeconomic influences

Social Implications of Illness

• Issues with respect to sudden illness
• Issues with respect to social attitudes that equate slimness with beauty
• Adjustment to disability – perceived and actual losses
• Cultural implications of disability and illness

Leisure

• The health benefits and the value of leisure
• The role of leisure in the health of people
  • Overcoming losses
  • Physical, social and emotional health
  • Social support networks

Therapeutic Recreation Frameworks and Interventions to Solve Problems

• Therapeutic touch
• Environmental/therapeutic milieu
• Non verbal (augmentative) communication
• Behaviour management practices, including behaviour modification
• Physical recreation activities as a therapeutic intervention
• Sensory stimulation
• Leisure activities and experiences
  • Physical, social, cognitive, emotional and spiritual activities
• Activity adaptation
• Emergent situational needs
• Activity adaptation
• Activity analysis