Leisure Ability Model Continued

In my last few posts, I have talked about Therapeutic Recreation and the model in which my practice will be based off of. This is the final post about the Leisure Ability Model.

           The final step is recreation participation. Once a client has come to this area, I am more of a resource. He is the one who finds activities in the community to participate in. He can come to me with questions on how or where to find these activities, and I will help guide him to new resources. I also will have prescribed activities but allow him to help me prepare and execute these activities. This area is where we get to have the most fun! For example, I have a client who now behaves in an acceptable manner and has many different skills, but he does not know what to do with this knowledge. I will help teach him how to use the Internet to find places in the area that he could go ice skating, bowling, and other things he wants to do. Once we get to this area, I will start having him run some of the activities so he will know how to in the future.

            Now sometimes we need to start in different areas of this model for different people. This is why arrows are overlapping. Sometimes a client will need to open up a little before allowing me to truly help so I would start with more fun activities and then lead into the therapy side. Other times, I may need to start with leisure education for example, a client who does not know how to fly fish cannot simply go out but rather must learn first. This is the leisure education part.

Please comment: What are your thoughts on the Leisure Ability Model? How have you used it in practice? 

Leisure Ability Model

            So the last post talked a little about the leisure ability model and the area of treatment. This post will cover the section about leisure education.
            The middle step is leisure education. This is where as the RT, I help teach the client that he has choices and can overcome barriers by gaining new resources and skills such as bowling, fly fishing, hiking, biking, and swimming. I act as a counselor in this area. I am showing new options and opportunities in life so the client can act autonomously. For example, I have a client who grew up in an impoverished area. He fell into drugs and stealing at a young age. I will take him fishing, bowling, and to other activities. By learning each of these activities, he will learn what he likes and does not like and be able to choose what he wants to do with his free time. This gives him other options besides stealing and doing drugs.
             Recreation is empowerment. It is a type of education and possibility for growth.

Please comment: What are your thoughts on the Leisure Ability Model? How have you used it in practice? 

The TR Trick

Any time I tell someone I am studying Therapeutic Recreation, they immediately ask, "Do you get to take all of the fun classes?" A lot of my friends take offense to this because we truly do have hard classes and a serious career path, but I prefer to take it comically. This is the trick to TR - people think we are just playing, but in reality, we are assessing, processing, teaching principles, and generalizing these principles to the patients' lives. 

This is what we see when we plan an activity:

This is called the leisure ability model. At the beginning, the purpose is to improve functional behaviors. This area is called treatment. The CTRS prescribes the activities for the client. The activities are planned, prepared for, and executed by the CTRS. As the client begins to improve functional behaviors, he moves on to the next step. For example, as a CTRS, I could work with someone who has traumatic brain injury who will show a variety of characteristics such as hand eye coordination, communication, interaction, and left-neglect. I would plan an activity such as Tetris that we will play together. This will work on his hand-eye coordination as he tries to fit the pieces together. Also, we will be talking which will work on his communication and interaction. He will have to use both hands, which will increase his use of his left side to overcome left neglect. 

Are you starting to see how this is much more than playing?