Asheville Adapted Cycling Group: A Community-Based Wellness Program

Introduction

Asheville, NC and the surrounding area has a strong cycling community and a proactive community of families of children with special needs. It seems logical that the two could come together to form a fun, inclusive organized cycling-based activity for our mountain town. My capstone project was to design and implement an adapted cycling group based here in Asheville. The Asheville Adaptive Cycling Group is based on the research and design from my community wellness project completed in PHYT 824 at UNC Chapel Hill.

Prior to forming the Asheville Adapted Cycling Group, there were no known organized cycling activities, clubs or groups available to children with disabilities and their families in the Asheville, NC area. Goals for the program include providing an organized fitness-focused group activity to promote healthy physical activity, increase health knowledge, foster socialization among children and families, and help children and families meet their individualized cycling goals.

Formation of the Asheville Adapted Cycling Group

The Asheville Adapted Cycling Group was formed as a partnership between the City of Asheville Therapeutic Recreation Program, SafeKids of Western North Carolina, and myself. The Therapeutic Recreation Program Director’s duties have included: reserving city park space, finalizing the program flyer and emailing it to families in the program database, receiving registration forms, providing snacks and some supplies for group activities, and providing one volunteer to assist with running group sessions. SafeKids of WNC attended the first group session and provided 8 helmets to children participating in the cycling group. I have been responsible for organizing group activities, communicating with children and families who have been interested in participating, soliciting bike shop assistance for mechanical support at each group session, finding volunteers to assist with running the program, organizing activities for the group, assigning volunteer tasks, transporting bikes/trikes for children, setting up/breaking down for each session, and leading all activities during sessions.

The program description that was emailed to potential participants read:

“In conjunction with Jason Mehler, PT and Safe Kids WNC, we are excited to offer this program focused on outdoor play and getting fit through planned games and activities.  This FREE program aims to improve riding skill and teach safe cycling strategies for youth ages 5+, with or without disabilities.  ALL pedaling abilities are welcome, ALL family and friends are invited to come out and ride with us, too!

Participants will need to bring their own bike/trike and helmet, unless other arrangements are made beforehand through the Therapeutic Recreation Program.

Please contact Lori Long with the Therapeutic Recreation Program to register today!”

The Asheville Adapted Cycling Group meets on Sunday afternoons from 2:00 to 3:30, and 4 sessions are scheduled on 4/10/16 through 5/1/16. We have had between 12 and 18 participants, ages 5-12, including siblings and children with various diagnoses, including cerebral palsy, Down Syndrome, autism and Rett Syndrome.

I have sent out weekly ‘newsletter’ emails to participants that have included pictures from the group sessions and give a little insight into what the group sessions actually look and feel like.  Here are a few pictures that I think capture some of the essence of the adapted cycling group:

Evaluation

Evaluation has been done through formal and informal methods:

• The Assistance to Participate Scale (APS) ¹ was given to participants’ families at the first group session, which gave a baseline for the amount of assistance needed for each child to participate in leisure activities. The average total score for APS responses was 27.67 of a possible 40 (higher score corresponds to more independence), with a range of 20 to 36.
• We have also done a ‘timed lap’ of a defined distance on a paved bike path at the beginning of each session. Changes in lap times for each child will be calculated as a measure of fitness/skill at the end of the group sessions.
• Informal evaluation has been done by phone calls, emails, and face-to-face interactions with each of the participating families and children. I have received extremely valuable feedback about how to improve the flow of group activities, possible accommodations for children with visual impairment, suggestions for defining specific group rules to children with rigid autistic behaviors, and brainstormed with parents about ideas of how to work as a team to meet the individual goals of children and families participating in the Asheville Adapted Cycling Group.
• Parents and/or children also wrote down one goal for participating in the cycling group, which has been taken into account when planning group activities and will be informally evaluated at the end of the group sessions.
• The Adapted Cycling Group is still in session at the time of this post, so final evaluations are not yet available.

Reflection

Organizing the Asheville Adapted Cycling Group has been a challenging and rewarding experience. Some of the challenges have included finding bicycles/tricycles for some children in need, transporting equipment, communicating with everyone involved in planning and supporting the group, recruiting volunteers, and accommodating the extremely varying pedaling abilities, ages and diagnoses of participants. The joys of getting the Asheville Adapted Cycling Group up and running, far outweigh the challenges, for certain. It has been extremely rewarding to see several children pedaling an adaptive tricycle for the first time, to see children and families come together and socialize at a celebratory event in a beautiful outdoors setting, to see progress in cycling skills as basic as steering and stopping and as advanced as learning to pedal without training wheels, to be able to provide free helmets to many children, and to have the chance to see each child’s face light up when they are individually recognized for their accomplishments in a group setting. Having a child-led, spontaneous dance party is a side benefit I didn’t see coming, too! The group has met for 2 of the scheduled 4 sessions at the time of this post, so I’m sure that more challenges and joys will arise. Whatever happens during the next 2 sessions, I have already learned just how much work, planning and joy go into developing a community-based wellness program.

Plan for the Future

I hope to make the Asheville Adapted Cycling Group a sustainable program with sessions annually or bi-annually. I have discussed this idea with the director of the City of Asheville Therapeutic Recreation Program and with students in Western Carolina University Physical Therapy Program, both of which say that they would be invested in helping run the program again. I will be in communication with both parties, as well as with the director of Western Carolina University Recreation Therapy Program, who has also helped provide some volunteer student help for the cycling group. A related goal will be to continue to ‘engage the stakeholders,’ so to speak, so that I can more equally distribute the responsibility of organizing, planning and running the Asheville Adapted Cycling Group.

Acknowledgments

A community-based wellness program like the Asheville Adapted Cycling Group is definitely a labor of love and couldn’t happen without the help of many. A big thank you goes out to Lori Long and Quan Sitton of the City of Asheville Therapeutic Recreation Program, to SafeKids of WNC, Asheville Street and Dirt, Liberty Bikes, Motion Makers Bike Shop, Pisgah Productions Race and Timing Services, Western Carolina Physical Therapy Program, Mission Children’s Hospital, AMBUCS of Western North Carolina, and to my committee members, Karen McCulloch and Christine Lysaght. The children and parents participating in the cycling group deserve thanks for taking their Sunday afternoons to lug heavy bikes and kids to the park to be a part of this, and for helping me work out the kinks of this fledgling program. Last, but definitely not least, my wife, Robin who has endured many nights of solo-parenting, grumpy husband syndrome, and has been my biggest, most enthusiastic supporter in both my tDPT endeavor and in making the Asheville Adaptive Cycling Group happen.

1. Bourke-Taylor H, Pallant JF. The assistance to participate scale to measure play and leisure support for children with developmental disability: Update following rasch analysis. Child Care Health Dev. 2013;39(4):544-551. doi: 10.1111/cch.12047 [doi].