The Meadow Lake area is leading the way with a program for children and adults who face physical and intellectual struggles.
People Advocating for Children with Exceptionalities (PACE) provides low or no-cost programming, but getting volunteers to commit wasn’t always easy.
With PACE’s Friend Blend group, peers are matched up with kids with special needs. They spend time out in the community for something as simple as heading out to a movie or going bowling.
University of Saskatchewan nursing school researcher and assistant professor Janet McCabe helped set them up with funding a few years ago, and was at a U of S luncheon last week talking about her work with people with exceptionalities.
She’s been amazed by some simple lessons they learned after struggling to recruit volunteers the first time around.
“Just being able to match volunteers with a buddy that they had similar interests, that’s really important. That’s why we all have friends there’s something that we have something to talk to each other about. If you don’t have anything that’s in common it’s hard to make conversation, it’s hard to form a friendship,” McCabe said.
They combined that with being persistent in reminding people of the program and explaining exactly what PACE’s Friend Blend volunteers need to do. This takes “away the fear of the unknown,” she said.
By the time Friend Blend did its second round of recruiting they had 72 school kids signed up.
Now, PACE is passing on its lessons to the Saskatchewan Association for Community Living. SACL has a similar program called Fusion Inclusion.
It’s been a few years since McCabe started the ball rolling with PACE, but she says her future studies are focused on making life easier for those with disabilities in northern and rural Saskatchewan.
“Rural and remote is sort of where my heart is because it’s a different situation than living in the city, where everything’s at your fingertips,” she said.
Currently, she’s involved with the Special Olympics health promotion.
“Sport gives someone an opportunity to define themselves. Like, you become known as Josh the athlete, who happens to have Down’s syndrome versus Josh with Down’s syndrome,” McCabe said.
One big benefit to getting people with exceptionalities involved in Special Olympics programming, is that it adds physical activity into largely sedentary lives. It also expands a person’s social circle beyond caregivers and family.
McCabe is looking to expand Special Olympics health promotion concepts to rural and remote communities.