Skip to main content

BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article

Front. Rehabil. Sci.
Sec. Disability, Rehabilitation, and Inclusion
Volume 5 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fresc.2024.1496185

Effectiveness of a 5-day Adapted Learn-to-Swim Program for Children with Disabilities

Provisionally accepted
Tana B Carson Tana B Carson 1*Megan Irwin Megan Irwin 2,3Tania Santiago Perez Tania Santiago Perez 1Ivana Frampton Ivana Frampton 1Lisa Ruby Lisa Ruby 3
  • 1 Florida International University, Miami, United States
  • 2 College of Charleston, Charleston, South Carolina, United States
  • 3 iCan Shine, Inc., Paoli, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Background: Drowning is a leading cause of death for children. Some populations of children with disabilities, such as children with autism, experience a health disparity in drowning when compared to peers without disabilities. Objective: This study presents a secondary data analysis of the response to intervention for a 5-day adapted learn-to-swim program (iCan Swim) for children with disabilities (n = 164 participants) ages 3-18 years. Methods: This secondary data analysis assessed the effectiveness of the swim intervention on changes in swim skill level from Day 1 to Day 5. Associations between response to intervention (i.e., change score) and participant characteristics were examined using Kendall’s tau-b for age and Chi-square for sex and diagnosis. Models were fit using a Poisson regression to examine potential predictors of progress across participants. Results: Swim skills significantly improved from Day 1 (Md = 1.00, n = 164) to Day 5 (Md = 2.00, n = 164), z = - 10.06, p < .001, r = .58). Most participants (61.6%) improved by at least one swim skill level. Age was weakly, yet significantly positively correlated with swim skill level change scores (τb =.154, p=.020) and was a significant predictor of swim skill level change for participants with Down Syndrome (b=.091, S.E.=.0434, p=.036, 95%CI [.006, .176)]. Conclusions: While this 5-day adapted learn-to-swim program was effective for most participants in improving swim skills, certain factors may have contributed to slower progression including participant fearfulness or needing more time. Further study of these factors is warranted.

    Keywords: Drowning prevention, water safety, Learn-to-swim, Adapted aquatics, adaptive aquatics, Disability

    Received: 13 Sep 2024; Accepted: 04 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Carson, Irwin, Santiago Perez, Frampton and Ruby. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Tana B Carson, Florida International University, Miami, United States

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.