1 1 EUCAPA 2012, Tuesday 8th May: 2 3 Opening address: Tim Scully of the Department of Transport, tourism and sport. 4 5 MR O'FLYNN: Good morning, welcome everybody. It's day 3 in the big brother house, 6 there will be evictions this evening! 7 8 For those of you here since Saturday it's been a long four days, I hope you are all 9 feeling fit and very well. A show of hands who is joining us for the first time this 10 morning? Just a few, so can I take it from the show of hands who was at the banquet 11 last night? 12 13 Very well done. If I just say to the Finns particularly, you really can dance! Never 14 in an Irish context have we seen a dance hall filled so quickly! It was great to see. 15 16 Okay to start us off this morning we are privileged to have a rare public appearance 17 from one of the men behind the scenes in Irish sport, our opening this morning will 18 be done by Tim Scully the Principal Officer of the Irish Department of Transport, 19 tourism and sport, he is also the head of sports policy. Tim Scully everyone. 20 21 MR SCULLY: Thank you very much. Ladies, gentlemen, distinguished guest, I'm 22 delighted to be with you here today for the official opening of the focus day and I'd 23 like to thank Niamh Daffy for her kind invitation. 24 25 The Department of Transport Tourism and Sport is responsibility for the development 26 of sport in that context we recognise that sport and physical activity have 27 significant potential to contribute to the development of a healthier society. 28 29 We want to ensure that all people are encouraged and given opportunities to 30 participate in sport and to enjoy the many benefits that sport can bring to 31 developing a healthy lifestyle. 32 33 We want Irish people to have access to sporting opportunities, to develop a lifelong 34 relationship with sport and to embrace the enjoyment and benefits that go with Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 2 1 sporting activity. 2 3 Sport has an inclusive philosophy, welcoming and valuing everyone, irrespective of 4 their ability or background, it has the potential to enrich the lives of all people 5 and no-one should feel they can't benefit from the physical activity. 6 7 It can play a major role, in personal, community and general development and provide 8 invaluable social, educational and recreational opportunities for every participant. 9 10 Of course physical activity is have important benefits not just for the individual, 11 but also for society, sport develops the personal skills of individuals, values such 12 as tolerance, self discipline, team spirit and strength of character are demanded, 13 practiced and promoted. 14 15 In this way sport serves an indispensable educational tool, both in schools and 16 college and in the wider community. 17 18 People with disabilities want to participate in sport and physical activity for all 19 the same reasons as those who do not have a disability. Getting that opportunity and 20 developing a lifelong interest in participating can be dependent on having a positive 21 early experience of sport in physical activity. 22 23 The APA can provide that positive experience and encourage people with a disability 24 to maintain their participation and by doing so, enjoy the health and social benefits 25 of physical activity. 26 27 It is especially important for people with disabilities to be involved in sport. 28 People with disabilities in Ireland are 3 times more likely to be inactive than 29 people without a disability. Research from America shows us children with 30 disabilities are 38% more likely to be obese than their counter parts, that is why it 31 is so important that we keep working on improving access to physical activity for 32 everyone. 33 34 The conference for today, national focus day, includes some very interesting Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 3 1 presentations and workshops, a day like today is a great way to keep abreast of 2 positive developments in the area and share best practice. I'm sure you will find it 3 very informative and useful. 4 5 Finally the department is very pleased two of it's agencies, Irish Sports Council and 6 Failte Ireland, are supporting this conference. I would like to congratulate them, 7 IT Tralee, CARA APA centre, the Department of Justice, Equality and Defence and the 8 National Disability Authority for supporting and organising this event over the last 9 few days. Thank you very much and enjoy the day. 10 11 MR O'FLYNN: Thank you Tim Scully. Now it's not often that disability sport takes 12 centre stage but this summer offers a unique opportunity for the world to celebrate 13 the participation and achievement of the paralympic athlete and people with 14 disabilities. 15 16 The paralympic games to be held in London in September will be broadcast on American 17 TV, on Channel 4 and BBC in the UK, by RTE and Setanta in Ireland and also by a range 18 of other countries. 19 20 Our next speaker, Dr Vicky Tolfrey, has been working with Paralympic athletes since 21 1994, through Atlanta, Sydney, Athens and Beijing. A senior lecturer in exercise 22 physiology, Dr Tolfrey is the director of the Peter Harrison Centre for disability 23 sport and also the editor of Wheelchair Sport in the UK, here to talk to us about her 24 experience as a sports scientist, supporting the paralympic athlete is Dr Vicky 25 Tolfrey. 26 27 DR TOLFREY: Thank you very much. I'd like to take the opportunity actually for 28 thanking the organising committee for inviting me and for the nice weather when I 29 arrived, the sunshine, as I left Luton it was raining, I landed into some gorgeous 30 sunshine here in Ireland. 31 32 A very brief visit for me, but I will certainly be back. 33 34 It's a very diverse audience and Donna summed it up nicely in terms of where do you Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 4 1 start in your own discipline? What I would like to do is actually start with a 2 video, just to show the bubble, the world of how I see disability sport and the 3 introduction will illustrate, I have been in this world since 1994 as a postgraduate 4 student undertaking my PhD, I was actually here with an audience similar to this back 5 in 1995 at Lueven, presenting my research, and the reason why I'm here still now is 6 really because of this opening video that I'd like to show you. 7 8 (Video playing) 9 10 So I still get the goose bumps now just watching that video, but that's my 11 inspiration, that's the reason why I'm undertaking research, leading research at 12 Loughborough, with colleagues in different disciplines contributing to the paralympic 13 athletes, but what I'd like to do at the very end if I have time is just illustrate 14 how my work, although it has a paralympic focus, very much is tapping down the 15 spectrum now, in the sense that obviously we need to have athletes from somewhere, we 16 need people to engage in exercise, for health benefit, for the recreational 17 community, and obviously filter them through, a small proportion to some athletes 18 that we see there and I know there is different road maps for people to do that. 19 20 But obviously working at this level is what I'm going to be discussing and when I was 21 thinking about my presentation, asked about a title, then it has been announced what 22 my title is, but it's really my perspectives of working in this sporting arena, and 23 what I'd like to do is draw together three case studies in this area and talk about 24 the relationships of working with other practitioners, taking a team approach, and 25 more importantly, talking about the philosophy of where I come from as an applied 26 sports science researcher. 27 28 So what this is actually showing here is the coach, the physio, supporting staff, and 29 my goal as a sports science applied researcher is to provide sports science support 30 to the high performance athletes, it needs to be accurate and reliable and I look at 31 the training status, try to optimise performance when it matters, make 32 recommendations, interventions but obviously to do that, there needs to be the buy in 33 from the support staff that you are working with, you couldn't do it in isolation as 34 a researcher. And that's why my relationships with Paralympic GB over the past few Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 5 1 years have been excellent in terms that have translation of the information and the 2 trust of the support staff that you're working with. 3 4 The most important aspect in my mind is the fact that what I do in terms of 5 scientific research and applied sports scientist, is that I need to do that in 6 partnership with the two people, alongside the other supporting staff, and to do that 7 I need to dovetail the needs of the athletes, the coach and they need to respect and 8 understand that in the term of science and what a scientist actually is. 9 10 So my journey, where do I come from? I'm in the laboratory testing, testing 11 athletes, the athletes are out in their field training, and utilising the information 12 that I have given them and they translate that hopefully to bring home some medals in 13 their sporting arena. 14 15 I'm working up the spectrum this way here and I need to make sure what I do is 16 perhaps driven by the right questions, that's very important for this partnership, 17 for the relationship of working with the coach, and working with the other support 18 staff. 19 20 I view myself very much as the person who sits behind the medalist, I'm just a small 21 fraction of someone there who is contributing to this performance, I'm not there on 22 the podium, it's the athlete and the coach and some other support staff who perhaps 23 are the key determinants of a success of receiving the actual medal, but I'm 24 hopefully there behind them, supporting them all the way and it gives me great 25 satisfaction to see this happen at the end of a game of basketball or track 26 performance. 27 28 So my key principles in terms of paralympic scientific support are driven around 29 these three theories that I have here, it needs to be coach led, it very much needs 30 to be athlete centred, but to get individuals to come to the laboratory where I 31 undertake physiological testing by mechanical assessments, etcetera, it must have 32 performance impact otherwise you won't get the buy-in by the coach, the athlete won't 33 travel the 4 hour journey to come to the laboratory to spend the day while I ask them 34 to swallow a telemetry pill to measure their core temperature and put balloons down Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 6 1 the nose and look at the pressure of the lungs, sometimes some invasive measures we 2 have to do to really understand the picture behind performance from a mechanics point 3 of view. 4 5 There is other aspects where I go to the sporting arena and collect data in the field 6 of play, that perhaps is a little more realistic for the sports performer and 7 receptive for them to engage in that type of research, but again at the right time 8 and right moment sometimes understanding the mechanistic aspects of performance can 9 be done, but certainly it's not being done now with just six months to go with 10 London, that will start again with the Rio cycle, we are very much now supporting 11 just the coach and what they need, but the performance impact is a key one and I want 12 to illustrate that to you in my case scenario. 13 14 So the three areas that I'm going to cover this morning is first of all some very old 15 work, perhaps in my younger days, around the concepts of supporting wheelchair 16 basketball squad, which was driven by some questions which were initiated by the 17 physiotherapist and then I undertook some biomechanical research to get some answers. 18 19 The second aspect I'll discuss today was the Beijing acclimatization group, I was 20 leading that, it has been shelved now, London we expect rain and a bit more rain, so 21 there won't be the challenges that we have had in the past with the travel and the 22 acclimatisation, but certainly it will be back on the radar for Rio, but I'd like to 23 discuss the working relationships I have had with sports science teams and healthcare 24 teams from both multi and inter-disciplinary perspective. 25 26 Finally I'd like to discuss a PhD research programme that has now been completed that 27 explored the relationship between physiology and biomechanics with exploring the 28 wheelchair configurations, is the chair set up optimally, if not what can we do and 29 should we do? 30 31 Hopefully that's the three areas if I have time today to discuss those through. 32 33 So the first one, like I say this is some research I did quite a while ago now, it 34 was actually leading into the Sydney cycle where we had a coach who just joined the Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 7 1 GB Wheelchair Basketball Association, at the end of 1998 or '99 with the games being 2 in 2000, he came with a running basketball background and I had been working with the 3 wheelchair basketball players for several years prior to his arrival. 4 5 What the study actually was titled was a biomechanical analysis of the free throw in 6 wheelchair basketball players for varying classifications. I'm going to show you in 7 the next two slides why we undertook this study. 8 9 I'm sure you are quite familiar in the audience in terms of what wheelchair 10 basketball is, we've seen a small clip of John Pollock making a very successful shot. 11 But basically depending on the level or degree of disability, players are assigned a 12 point classification and the coach has a certain amount of points on the field of 13 play. What was important to performance impacts when we studied the statistics from 14 the 1998 gold cup championships, 22% of the three throw shots were taken from the 15 three throw line. 16 17 So if we can get that shot right that's like a closed activity of wheelchair 18 basketball performance. 19 20 There was limited research in the area, there was clear differences in terms of 21 someone who has a chair set up, perhaps a one or two point player who actually has 22 the ball release at a lower height, less stability and trunk control, but what was 23 interesting with the new coach coming into the sport was could he just translate his 24 able bodied theory to then working with the wheelchair basketball player. What 25 coaching models were available out there to establish the technical shooting 26 differences that may occur as a result of classification, but on top of that, was the 27 physio, it wasn't this physio, I've just taken a snapshot of her, but the physio back 28 in 1998, she came to me and said Vicky a lot of the one point players after doing 29 their shooting regime in the morning, which was 500 shots at 7 o'clock in the 30 morning, volume is what the coach initially went for. 31 32 They were doing that shot and they were having quite a lot of problems with their 33 wrist, this was one point basketball players, doing the same training, volume, 34 shooting wise as an amputee wheelchair basketball player, so the physio alerted me to Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 8 1 a problem. 2 3 So what I did was had a look, we had 17 wheelchair basketball players, I said let's 4 look at group one, two and three. I'll illustrate here a video of them taking shots, 5 this is out of group one players, a two point player, a mid point player here who has 6 some trunk stability making a shot, and then I categorised the amputee group here as 7 my high pointers, group three. 8 9 So I divided the athletes into three groups and said let's have a look at the 10 biomechanics of taking a three throw shot. We did a 3-D analysis I don't want to 11 bore you too much in terms of technical detail, but we can look at the height of 12 release, angle of release, the lean of the body, but more importantly the velocity 13 contributions of shoulder, elbow and wrist that contribute to the shot. 14 15 This is quite a descriptive table here and it really focuses what we see in 16 wheelchair basketball, you have low point players, high point players, tall amputee 17 players will sit high because they are tall, and their release of the ball is 1.78 18 metres compared to group one at 1.52, the speed of release compensates for the 19 difference in terms of height so the one point players throw quicker, 7.6 metres per 20 second versus 7.2 -- we see that, that's an observation. 21 22 What was more important was the next data, which we obtained through the 3-D video 23 analysis, the angle of velocity at the point of release, the contribution coming from 24 either the shoulder, elbow or wrist. 25 26 If I just draw your attention to the wrist, this is the site where we had problems of 27 one point players, we could clearly see the one point players here, greater 28 contribution, angle of velocity, speed of that segment was occurring at the wrist 29 relative to the other groups, where there was quite a similar contribution at the 30 elbow, responsibly shoulder, but a bit more from group 3 who have greater control and 31 stability. 32 33 So I am bringing a picture up here, evidence based practice of showing a model of 34 what's happening an then how can we relate this to coaching practice. Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 9 1 2 In summary what I found was the throwing pattern of group 3 was they could utilise 3 the shoulder flex, they contribute and that then contributes to the ball release. 4 Whereas the group which had higher incidence of injury, their wrist flexion seemed to 5 be very important, because perhaps they were compensating for the deficiency of the 6 shoulder movement and the shot was coming from the wrist because they were lacking 7 that kinetic chain. 8 9 So as a practical application of the work I was able to feed back to the coach in 10 support of the physio, in simple terms we need to reduce the shooting volume of the 11 one point players, don't do the 500 shots the same as the amputee before a scrimmage 12 session, it needs to be modified accordingly. 13 14 I perhaps could have said that on day one before undertaking this study, because it 15 was clear, you see that. But by having this information, undertaking this research 16 we were able to show the athletes, show the coaches their profiles and say that's a 17 matter of fact, let's look and see how we can change this. 18 19 As a consequence of this research and unfortunately I never got a photo of this 20 device, but if you can imagine a dodgem car, which are basically cars that have a 21 metal thing in front of you that touch a metal roof to power it, we designed some 22 metal rods that went on the front of a wheelchair, up about six-foot and bent around 23 a bit, what we were trying to teach the one point players was throw the ball up and 24 try and use a bit more of the shoulders rather than pushing the shot. 25 26 So we were utilising and changing something, they did this for four or five weeks, it 27 didn't go down well, it looked a bit freaky on the basketball court, but it was good 28 to say technical changes may need to happen and we did try and implement changes 29 within coaching practice. 30 31 That was my first case study, a successful story, I should show you statistics to 32 show that the injury rates did go down, anecdotally they did go down and the physio 33 was very pleased with that reduction in the volume of shooting. 34 Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 10 1 Moving onto the second case scenario, this is one of my very pleasing research areas, 2 because it was a really big team effort and what we can see on this slide here is 3 this is actually one of our bases, simulation and holding camp that took place in 4 Macau, we had an identical discipline but different people in Hong Kong, so we 5 replicated in Macau to what we had in Hong Kong in 2006, 2007 and then we had the 6 holding camp in 2008, big investment in terms of what could be done in preparing our 7 athletes with travelling to Beijing, this is very much in my area now, the exercise 8 of physiology. 9 10 The working remits we were working towards is summarised on this slide on the left. 11 Paralympic GB's 2008 holding camp aims to provide an optimal preparation environment, 12 free from distraction, where athletes can acclimatise and focus, leaving the camp 13 best prepared and ready to deliver personal best performances in Beijing. 14 15 That was our working remit. We had people with expertise in jet lag, well-being, 16 pollution, nutrition/Fluids, heat challenges, we had S and C coaches looking at 17 peaking, strength conditioning, how we could monitor and prescribe training. We had 18 a real opportunity in 2006, 2007 to collect some experimental data, live applied 19 support of which then could be replicated at the holding camp, because obviously you 20 don't want to collect research data then, you want to inform, discuss with the 21 coaches and perhaps illustrate best practice. 22 23 So in some situations we were a fly on the wall, we let the coaches do what they did, 24 looked at the well-being of the athletes, monitored jet lag etcetera, then had case 25 conferencing during the camps to say; athlete B is struggling a bit here with jet 26 lag, let's think about their training regime is; and we had case conferencing that 27 was live during the ten-day periods of the camp. 28 29 But what was one of the underlying successes of this group, the acclimatisation group 30 was seeing changes in behaviour actually at the games. I'm going to illustrate 31 quickly to you one of the scenarios. 32 33 So I was tasked with a workforce of developing a little research team that was called 34 Environment and Performance Projects Team. And we see all the contributors at Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 11 1 various times over three years on the top of the slide here, academics, practitioners 2 and a key medical officer Dr Nick Weborn, we had athletes from different sports, 3 disciplines, my area of expertise is wheelchair sport so I was quite familiar working 4 with wheelchair rugby guys and basketball, but there were other sports groups as well 5 cerebral palsy football, we did cooling strategies with them, we had table tennis, 6 shooting and we were trying to look at challenges of the sport in their arena and 7 whether we had to look at some strategies during game play. 8 9 So our mission as a sub group was to send the best prepared team to the Paralympic 10 Games, the primary purpose of that group was to minimise the detrimental effects that 11 a range of environmental factors have on performance. So we packed our kit bag, had 12 a refractometer to look at urine, every morning at 6 o'clock I was woken up with 13 about 60 urine pots outside my door and I was analysing those to see, they just came 14 off a flight, am I looking at syrup, something a bit more diluted, let's put 15 strategies in place, I can certainly say the asparagus they had one night in the 16 hotel wasn't that pleasant when I opened the pots, I had sugar puffs experience once 17 before, but asparagus, definitely not going there! 18 19 We took scales to monitor fluids drunk, we took nice flash pills that the athletes 20 would swallow to measure the core temperature, they cost 42 pounds and get deposited 21 down the toilet so we needed sponsors, but that allowed us look at the core 22 temperature in the field of play. 23 24 Pre-and post body mass, took ice vests, essential equipment, not just the Bocce balls 25 but the water bottle with that, hydration was one of the key strategies. 26 27 And working with the team of healthcare specialists I was working with Jeanette 28 Crossland, the nutritionist for Paralympics GB, and there was a great partnership and 29 working relationship there. 30 31 We were tasked with, again where were we going to make the biggest performance 32 impact? So we say let's look at the sports. We have several summer sports, some not 33 necessarily represented by our delegation, but we have the summer sports here. We 34 then categorised according to some Athens data that the medical officer had collated, Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 12 1 we said heat stress index wise, let's categorise the groups, sporting groups here by 2 whether or not they are high risk, intermediate risk or low risk, that was based on 3 the physiological demands of the sports in relation to whether or not they took place 4 indoors or outdoors. 5 6 So you can see at the top the high risk sports were athletics, cycling, equestrian, 7 tennis and football, predominantly because they were outdoor activities, but also the 8 demands through the need analysis of what the athlete has to do. 9 10 What was interesting was wheelchair rugby was categorised as intermediate risk 11 because they play indoors, that's an intriguing one. Wheelchair rugby guys came to 12 the camps in Macau, spinal cord injury is the main disability of that particular 13 group, and if we just do a further needs analysis in terms of thermoregulatory 14 challenges and look at the tetraplegics. They may have a loss in sympathetic 15 innovation to the heart -- their sweating is compromised, they're the lowest group in 16 terms of functional capacity, if we relate them to high level paraplegics and to 17 lower level paraplegics. There is a lot of research undertaken by Dr Price from 18 Compton University in the UK who I collaborate with and he looked at a group of high 19 paras and the sweating has been found to be proportional to the lesion, same as low 20 level paras, so if you go back to the tetraplegics where do they sweat? If we watch 21 a wheelchair rugby game, where do they heat? Heat storage, they got hot and they 22 could be a group that really perhaps should be at the high risk level, not 23 intermediate risk, but they were new really into the cycle of Paralympics because 24 they had gone out to Sydney for an exhibition event, they were there in Athens and 25 then they were there in Beijing, so there is not so much of a history behind that 26 particular population group. 27 28 So two years leading into the Beijing cycle, so we used the opportunity to pack our 29 bags of all the equipment that you saw, the nice big telemetry data loggers, which 30 involved swallowing the pill, and we tracked a scrimmage session of five of the 31 spinal cord injured athletes known to have some problems on court when they played, 32 feeling very hot and they wanted to have a look and see how hot did they actually 33 get. 34 Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 13 1 Here if we draw your attention to 0 minutes going to 90 minutes of scrimmage, a 2 training session, and the core temperature here. We can see that we have the blue 3 athletes here almost approaching 40 degrees after undertaking half of their scrimmage 4 session. We also have this athlete here with similar value and around about 39 5 degrees for another athlete. 6 7 A bit later on this athlete shown by the yellow triangles increases their core 8 temperature to around about 39.5. What's interesting is whilst they were doing that 9 scrimmage session they didn't feel their temperatures were that temperature. I said 10 how are you feeling? Fine, great, I want to get on with pushing around the court. 11 If I was undertaking this experiment in the laboratory I ethically would have to go 12 through ethics and say what my termination of core temperature was and I always 13 struggle to try and get it at about 39.7, the last ethical committee put it down to 14 39.6, if they are doing exercise in a heat chamber where I am the experimenter, the 15 investigator, I would have to say; all right Andy, you're stopping pushing now, but 16 they are doing this on court, in wheelchair basketball, rugby sorry. 17 18 More importantly, they are doing this in a neutral environment, the temperature being 19 around about 17 or 18 degrees. Not at 30 degrees, and we have the wheelchair tennis 20 players in Wimbledon, in Florida, at those extremes, the same population group, the 21 tetraplegics playing tennis, so it opens the doors to say what's the health and 22 well-being of athletes training in, training out? Day in, day out and reaching a 23 very high critical core temperature. 24 25 What could we do about it? We then review literature and look at different cooling 26 techniques, fans, ice vests, water bottles, we could even go to the parts of our body 27 when you're cool you put your gloves on, when you're hot you pop your hands in cold 28 water, our hands are made up of high dense AVAs, like capillaries, if you put your 29 hands when you're hot in water you will cool down. 30 31 So we thought could we do some hand and foot cooling? If you're cooling the foot you 32 need to think about the gravity effect because obviously it won't get circulated 33 around with individuals with a complete lesion, the hand cooling possibly can't be 34 used because we need the hands to catch a ball or throw a ball and we don't want to Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 14 1 lose the ability of numbness in the hands, etcetera. 2 3 There has been positive effects found in endurance capacity, we have reduced thermal 4 strain using these, using an ice vest, pre-cooling the athletes, they undertake a run 5 and it blunts the margin of that rise of core temperature. Could we perhaps do that? 6 What's the logistics of getting a squad of ten in ice vests 20 minutes before a game 7 with the staff that we have in Beijing, we have to free some ice vests, transport 8 them, get them there, maybe that's not very practical, for some sports it might be, 9 but we have to look at the practicality and what we could perhaps do. 10 11 We then need to question the suitability of what we can do with respect to could we 12 use a time out maybe, could we use the half time if we can't use pre-cooling type of 13 strategy? So first of all we ask ourselves what's practical? What's the cooling 14 power -- I don't know if many people have seen athletes just place something on their 15 head, certainly in Wimbledon, you see them put a towel on their head and ice around 16 the neck, that's going to have low cooling power, so it won't reduce your core 17 temperature, but it make you perceive and feel the environment is cool, so it could 18 have a psychological effect, but not a physiological effect. 19 20 I have done some research in that area, if you don't linking it with your nutritional 21 strategy you actually drink less, so if you feel cool you don't drink as much and 22 that could negatively factor on long term performance, there are issues around that. 23 24 We then go on to whether or not you can do these techniques in your sporting arena 25 because of the rules, so we can't really wear an ice vest during wheelchair rugby, 26 but maybe we can do something in the breaks, that is the challenge of saying let's 27 look at the sport. 28 29 What we actually did he, we thought the guys use the water sprays, that's something 30 that they do regularly, but the problem with just using a water spray is it saturates 31 your face and it doesn't dissipate, it's not like individuals who actually have a 32 good sweating capacity, need the convection in terms of dissipating into the 33 environment, so we need a fan whilst you water spray your face, a fan to then absorb 34 into the environment to release and get rid of the heat, like an artificial sweat Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 15 1 feature. So the sweat evaporation. 2 3 And this is actually what we did. 4 5 6 7 (video playing) 8 9 Hopefully you'll see here, this is during a game, we trial it had two years leading 10 into Beijing, the guys are spraying themselves and fans are coming around now to a 11 couple of key players that have problems and we are holding the plan, a guy here 12 doing localised cooling, spraying himself and using the fan as well. 13 14 I guess this was my success story, was the education for two years around about heat 15 acclimatisation, cooling strategies, we Googled and looked for some very powerful 16 fans that could be placed into a rucksack and we sourced these fans from America, we 17 bought several of them, the guys then were responsible themselves in their equipment 18 list, they took them to the event and like I say, the impact was they used it during 19 some games. 20 21 They got fourth place, not third, but watch out London, we'll be there with the 22 medals for that one! 23 24 So that was a success story there, like I say working very much with the healthcare 25 specialists, particularly with nutritionist because I didn't want the negative effect 26 of using these cooling garments, water, sprays, fans and then the athletes didn't 27 drink, so each athlete had an individualised fluid replacement strategy, so when they 28 used the fans they still knew that they had to drink X amount of fluids, even if they 29 felt cool because they were doing that, again because of the fact of dehydration 30 etcetera. 31 32 So that was my second working practice case I wanted to share with you. The final 33 one that I'd like to share is a PhD programme of study which occurred over the last 34 four years, again an interesting one because this actually was funded by UK sport, I Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 16 1 collaborated with Prof Lucas van der Woude, apologies for my pronunciation, I have 2 known him 7 years, but not good on surnames. 3 4 I got him involved because of his expertise in manual wheelchair propulsion and what 5 the task was, was to look at the ergonomics of wheelchair configuration for optimal 6 sport performance. 7 8 Now to me this is a case study that is very, very inter-disciplinary in terms of the 9 nature. You have a wheelchair performer, sat in a wheelchair, but you have the 10 mechanics of that wheelchair that you need to understand with the interaction of the 11 athlete pushing that wheelchair and we need to combine and look at the interfacing 12 model, so we need to look at the physical capacity, and we need to look at the 13 mechanics, technique, biomechanics of the system. 14 15 Now that could be done by someone who calls their self an ergonomics type of person 16 or could be done with a physiologist talking to a bio-mechanist, etcetera, but the 17 three of us, myself perhaps more around physiology, Barry the PhD student who was a 18 bio-mechanist and Lucas who was ergonomics, the God of manual wheelchair propulsion 19 who was happy to work with us, with this particular programme. 20 21 This PhD started in the Beijing cycle, again the timing of what we wanted to do, we 22 couldn't just intervene and change chairs, because when you start changing a chair 23 perhaps when it's a year out to competition, you have to consider the psychological 24 factors with that, so we took a systematic approach, study by study and the needs at 25 the time in terms of the four-year programme of study. 26 27 Now the concept was the fact that we want to optimise wheelchair performance and 28 there have been significant developments in design and configuration over the years, 29 we have some chairs that look like this back in 1948 and they have evolved over the 30 years very much to titanium, very low weight, mass in terms of the wheelchairs, there 31 are spies out there from other countries, I'm not going to show you what our chair 32 looks like for London, they have been launched and passed but they are the next model 33 up from this here, that's under wraps, we want to keep some of our science to 34 ourselves! Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 17 1 2 But there is very little evidence base on why we should change certain things on a 3 wheelchair to improve the mobility, that really was the starting point in the sense 4 that when we then asked the athletes and say you've changed now your camber from 18 5 to 24, or you've changed your caster wheel size at the front or the seating, why? 6 That was the question, because the partnership that we have here is I'm not a 7 wheelchair user, I'm a scientist. 8 9 A lot of the athletes in the GB team had numerous years of experience of pushing the 10 wheelchair, excelling to the highest levels in terms of podium performance etcetera, 11 and what was quite evident really was the fact that the sports wheelchair 12 configurations really were based very much on subjective perceptions, trial and 13 error. 14 15 But that's good, because then we can say let's have a look at some of these factors 16 and collect some data and evidence to support your subjective feelings and 17 perceptions. So the starting point of this particular work was really to provide an 18 evidence base around the effects of wheelchair configuration on areas of mobility 19 performance. 20 21 What did we investigate, where do we start? What we had to try and do was think 22 about, discuss, gather the literature in terms of what areas of configuration do 23 athletes and coaches benefit, this is the performance impact, where would they 24 benefit to be quicker, to spin around, to be agile on court? We had to use a 25 qualitative approach for this first investigation which was a little bit out of my 26 area of expertise in the sense that I like numbers, I like the evidence to say cause 27 and effect, but it was very important that we actually built this picture around the 28 qualitative approach first, to ascertain what the experienced wheelchair athletes 29 were doing, why? What were the coaches aware of, the manufacturers of the 30 wheelchairs themselves? How did they think they were affecting performance if they 31 were to change something? 32 33 And through this transcribing the data collection, through semi structured 34 interviews, we saw a degree of similarities in why people were adopting maybe greater Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 18 1 camber, larger wheel sizes, smaller hand rims, etcetera. 2 3 So that was quite nice to say if people know that and literature is confirming that, 4 that's perhaps not an area to focus our attention of research on. But what was 5 important was when it came to a question about why have you that camber, or why have 6 you elected for 25 inch wheels rather than 24 or 26? The athletes, the coaches had 7 conflicting remarks. 8 9 Some of them thought it was because it makes me go quicker, but another person would 10 say it makes me more agile, a little slower but I can compromise that with agility on 11 the court. So there was a conflict in the area. That made me think with Barry and 12 Luke that we needed to adopt a multidisciplinary approach to look at physiology, 13 biomechanics, and performance measures in both laboratory and field based 14 environment. 15 16 Now field based testing is favoured by the athletes and coaches, it's more specific 17 to competition, athletes like us going to them, but if they come to us it's a bit 18 more artificial being on a treadmill and things like that. 19 20 But in my mind being on a treadmill like this slide shows here is that's a vital 21 starting point for us to understand things in a controlled environment, it allows us 22 to look at cause and effect, someone pushes in a known environment at a known speed, 23 a known power output, we can manipulate something and say your efficiency has gone 24 down by 2% because we changed this feature of the wheelchair. 25 26 So we then think what do we need to measure, what's the markers? So we look at 27 physiology, oxygen uptake, heart rate, rating of perceived exertion, imagine you are 28 driving down a motorway in the Morris Minor, driving down the motorway in your 29 Jaguar, which will be the most economical on fuel? That's like the scenario I'm 30 looking at, the option uptake to say what system you're pushing is the most economic, 31 because there are components of endurance fitness that are very important for 32 performance, it's an intermittent high intensity activity, but if you are doing it 33 day in day out over competition for eight days and one recovery day, endurance is a 34 key factor for not only the activity itself and performance wise, but also with the Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 19 1 recovery to take part in the final after day eight of competition. 2 3 Fatigue can be a limiting factor in performance court sports, we look at some work 4 that's come from America with Laurie Malone's team etcetera, we have done work using 5 notation analysis and you can see in the second half the great fatigue of the 6 athletes in their sprinting top end speeds in the second half compared to the first 7 half, so fatigue is a key factor, if we can try and optimise that. 8 9 If we look at the biomechanics factor of where we come, from a technique, then we 10 want to do a kinetic analysis to explore the propulsion technique, we place markers 11 on the athlete, place video cameras and look at elbow angles, shoulder angles and 12 link that where possible with uses such as the smart wheel, which allow us look at 13 the magnitude, direction of the force application, so what happens at those high 14 speeds? 15 16 We can link this possibly to an insight about the jury risk, work with other team 17 members and the physiotherapists, SNC coach, to have these models of the athletes if 18 they were to increase their camber that actually might mean their elbow angle is in a 19 less favourable position and their wrist is twisting around a bit with a potential of 20 injury. 21 22 When we move to the field, we want to replicate as much as we can to the sport, we 23 can use their own configuration but what we must ensure is that we have good tests 24 that enable us to look at markers of performance such as acceleration, sprinting, 25 breaking, pushing backwards and we can do that with some simple tasks such as timing 26 gates, velocimeters we have developed to look at acceleration profiles. 27 28 But what's important with that is we must have reliability tests and good 29 reproducibility. So if we do a battery of tests here that involves an athlete 30 pushing forwards, going backwards, go forwards, backwards forwards, so pulling 31 backwards like they would do in the sports, is if they do that on day one, they do 32 that on day two and don't change their chair configuration, there is good agreement 33 with their times, so then when we come in with manipulation of the chair, we then 34 know the meaningfulness of that change. Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 20 1 2 So we've done some calculations on reliability and found some co-efficient variables 3 of 1 to 2% which is very good for these type of tests. 4 5 The interesting thing then is what do we do with data when we collect it? Here is 6 some data here, I'll not go into too much detail, that looks at camber and wheel 7 size, so we have camber 15 to 24 degrees, wheel size, small wheels 24 to 26, the 8 physiological demand is favourable in 15 to 18 degrees camber, but not 20 and 24. If 9 you like at sprinting ability that's favourable in 18 and 20 degrees, but not at 24 10 and we didn't measure it at 15. Maneuverability, we can group the data and they help 11 us produce research papers. 12 13 But if we really want to understand an individual and what's optimal for them, we 14 must configure, have configuration and explore data from an individual perspective. 15 16 Hopefully what we can see here is not one configuration is optimal for everybody, but 17 if we group our data and then translate this to the developmental player, what we 18 perhaps can say it is a good starting point for athletes, based on this data is 18 19 degree camber may be quite good for people that don't have this information to base 20 their selections on, to then move upwards and downwards from this starting criteria 21 point. 22 23 We then say the role of the athlete needs to be combined with the coach, what's their 24 impairment, what's their role on court, do they need to be agile, do they need to be 25 quick? Do they pull backwards more? So we need to actually consult this information 26 with the coach, we do a written feedback, we do this specifically for individuals and 27 we then provide verbal feedback at training camps, it's very important we feed back 28 this to the group, and we allow opportunity for further discussion. 29 30 So it's very important when I do research it's fed back and fed back in the right 31 fashion. 32 33 So in summary of this particular case scenario once we provided the evidence base, 34 the decision lies with the athlete and the coach. Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 21 1 2 They have got the information they need, we're there to still help, advise and track 3 and monitor, but we've passed our resources to them. They must obviously consider 4 other areas, because some of the tests we do doesn't involve the ball handling 5 skills, so there is other components of court sport, decision-making, psychology, 6 team play, etcetera, that all needs to be considered. But ultimately it still 7 remains the subjective element to this wheelchair configuration process. 8 9 What I have got and I'll leave these somewhere for people to collect them, the first 10 part of our research that's translating this information to the development player 11 and we have actually compiled Barry's 200 or 300 page PhD into a 16, 18 page booklet 12 of how to choose and select a wheelchair. These are free for to you take away and 13 maybe I can pass them to the organisers. 14 15 So in summary then of the whole presentation, it's really difficult to appreciate how 16 the extent of this work has had on the overall success of GB at the Paralympics. 17 However I must hold my hand up to say that I feel, personally, that the individuals 18 who I've worked with do now understand how sports science can be used, the education 19 process has been there, and I believe that this application to the coaching of the 20 sports science and dissemination of information has improved over the years that I 21 have been working with the particular athletes. 22 23 So to end with, I guess I arrived late yesterday, I attended several sessions since, 24 but the general feel that I get of this conference is really the fact that I'm at the 25 spectrum here, I'm working with elite athletes, but whichever way we look at it, I 26 can say I'm working here and trying to translate my knowledge now down to those that 27 are engaging in rehabilitation, following a spinal cord injury, to physical activity. 28 29 There are some people in the audience who are working here looking at the 30 opportunities and trying to look at the barriers to encourage people to have this 31 physical activity and healthy lifestyle, and they are passing me people of which I 32 can work with up here. 33 34 It's the lessons we learn and how we disseminate that information and like I say, Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 22 1 some of the future work of the Peter Harrison centre is very much working around that 2 area, yes we may have this paralympic focus, but we appreciate the athletes have to 3 come from somewhere through the different pathways to get to the agenda where we are 4 working with and from. 5 6 So I do, like I say have this booklet which is come out of our work, and the final 7 one, is a couple of years ago, with collaborators I have worked with from a research 8 perspective, we tried to put together some information about wheelchair sport that 9 was a guide for coaches and teachers. Thank you very much for your attention. 10 11 MR O'FLYNN: Thank you very much Dr Tolfrey, I understand you'll take question, we 12 have about five minutes if you want to. Whose first, we can get a mic down to you? 13 14 Q. DR KUDLACEK: Thank you for a nice presentation, I have a question, what is your 15 experience about how to bring this knowledge to professional preparation for example 16 in coach training or undergraduate training, where we should impact this kind of 17 information, where is the place, if you try to implement it in Loughborough? 18 DR TOLFREY: That's a good question, we had some discussion over the meal last night 19 over this topic. 20 21 My experiences as an undergraduate student in the first place is that I was not 22 exposed to APA in the curriculum, and it was just an opportunity where I was asked to 23 do a PhD with wheelchair racing, I looked at the sport and thought that's for me I 24 like that, that's where the interest came from. 25 26 That said, now I'm actually a lecturer teaching undergraduates and at my former 27 university, which was Manchester Metropolitan University, I did actually have a 28 module called Adapted Physical Activity and there was perhaps about 30 students on 29 there and I taught them, but the numbers went down and the Head of Department said 30 that's not feasible any more, I moved to Loughborough and I teach on two modules 31 there. 32 33 One is a ten week module called fitness and training, I have one session out that 34 have ten weeks on the special populations, that covers the female athlete and I Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 23 1 incorporate disability within that session as well. That's year one. 2 3 At year three is my other module called the physiology of special populations and we 4 have four weeks on disability, three weeks on the older population and three weeks on 5 paediatric exercise physiology. 6 7 So it's one of these things where I really like to teach the module but it's the 8 demand. And I feel that one of the things that Paralympics GB is going to do, if you 9 go to their strategic document at this moment in time, is they are trying to use not 10 only the games as inspiration for people to be active, which I know there is pros and 11 cons either way of using that elite model, but they are actually trying to have an 12 objective of increasing the public awareness and perceptions of disability through 13 the Paralympic Games. 14 15 I'm hoping in partnership with Paralympics GB through their forum, that we actually 16 can engage with maybe higher education establishments to improve and implement some 17 modules at university level, because I still think that's lacking. It could even be 18 simply as I have a colleague at Brunel university that I work with that does exercise 19 physiology on respiratory function using a spinal cord injury athlete as a model. A 20 lecture is a great way of illustrating training optimisation around respiratory 21 training devices, using that model in a specific physiology module, but it's a way 22 forward. 23 24 I think it's all about confidence of other lecturers who don't necessarily work day 25 in and out in the field of disability sports, but to provide coaching material, 26 teaching materials that could fit and compliment current modules maybe. That's one 27 of the philosophies that I'm thinking about, because in most universities it's all 28 about numbers and if your module is not successful or promoted right, your numbers 29 trickle down and your head of school says that's not feasible let's put another 30 module in place, you are always competing against modules like nutrition and 31 performance, which has 80 students compared to my module that only has 20, but I 32 think we can integrate the teaching. 33 34 MR O'FLYNN: We have a second question. Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 24 1 2 Q. Hi Vicky, given that you are in the multi dimensional nature of sports science, who 3 makes the decisions in terms of which science takes the most performance effect? 4 Because sometimes you are talking about successful ones, but also some of those 5 factors have a negative impact as well, or even a psychological one? 6 DR TOLFREY: Yes the team I worked with leading to Beijing, we had a sports science 7 medical strategic team and we actually had myself as a physiologist, we had a 8 nutritionist, a psychologist, a strengths and conditioning physio, so we he 9 representatives around the table, and we used to always do quite a lot of case 10 conferencing sport by sport, we'd look at the sport, look at the position of the 11 sport, who the sport employs in terms of whether they have their own physiologist, 12 etcetera and how we could work with them to try and create better opportunities 13 through the use of sport science, whether it was a priority for Paralympics GB to 14 invest or whether the sports themselves needs to own something and take a better 15 direction. 16 17 Unfortunately after Beijing, that group no longer existed and I got drawn into UK 18 Sport to be a bit of an advisor, I think that needs to be resurrected in the next 19 cycle and I'm trying to push the case for sports science. 20 21 MR O'FLYNN: Thank you Dr Tolfrey, in recognition of your presence here we'd like to 22 make a small presentation, this is Peter Smyth of the Irish Sports Council. Dr Vicky 23 Tolfrey everybody. 24 25 There will be another opportunity to ask questions at the expert panel discussion 26 later on this afternoon. There is a coffee break now, can I just remind people a 27 couple of brief things, poster presenters could you go to your station for final 28 assessment to take place during the coffee break and can I also remind people to 29 check out from the hotel is 10 am so you probably should be thinking about moving 30 out. Thank you very much. See you back in here at 11 o'clock. 31 32 End of Presentation 33 34 Dr Lauren Lieberman: Inclusion in physical education, ethics, principles and Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 25 1 practice. 2 3 MR O'FLYNN: Welcome back everybody, just a quick note, is Judith Gombas in the room? 4 She is presenting at 11.30, could you please go to registration desk and upload your 5 presentation, thank you. 6 7 We welcome now one of our main guest speakers Dr Lauren Lieberman, a world renowned 8 expert in the field of developing the abilities of children with vision impairments, 9 Dr Lieberman is a Professor at the state university of New York. Working in the area 10 of adapted physical education. 11 12 Ladies and gentlemen, Dr Lauren Lieberman. 13 14 DR LIEBERMAN: I appreciate everyone being here, especially after last night! It was 15 a fun time. I just want to know who ordered the dinner last night, that was awesome 16 wasn't it, and also the music was awesome, I just think everything all around was 17 wonderful. 18 19 And so my presentation today is about inclusion in physical education, ethics, 20 principles and practice. 21 22 And the first thing I just want to share is a couple of stories, I think that will 23 hit home and I'm sure some of you can tell the same kind of stories where people say 24 kids with disabilities are included, but are they really included? And so one of the 25 things that I was at a school two weeks ago, and they said they were very proud of 26 their inclusion programme. 27 28 Sixth graders, picture this, it was a sixth grade class and kids were sitting in 29 squads, the kids who were supposedly included were standing against the wall because 30 there was a separate class, with their aid, the teacher gave the instructions and 31 then the kids with the disabilities joined in the class, it was a tag game, an 32 elimination tag game, so they were included for literally ten seconds and they got 33 tagged and they sat out for about ten minutes. 34 Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 26 1 My question is, is that inclusion? They weren't there at the instruction, they 2 weren't sitting with their peers and they got tagged out. One of the kids actually 3 stayed in for about two minutes. So that was just one school. 4 5 Then I went to a different school, a third grade and the third grade -- one of my 6 former students was the adapted specialists it was inclusive class, a general PE 7 class with the adapted specialist with three kids with autism, they were included. 8 And so when I walked in I was there the class before, there were two women standing 9 on the corner talking, I said that's really nice, I thought they were two moms and 10 came to see the kids in PE, I thought that's really cool letting moms to come and 11 watch kids in PE, they were standing there for about 20 minutes, they were the aids, 12 the teacher aids. 13 14 So then that class left and the next class came in and this adapted teacher said oh 15 our kids aren't here yet, the kids are already in the squads and they started the 16 instruction, I said where are they, well the aids had to take the other class back 17 and then they are always late, she is standing there. I said why don't you go get 18 them? She says this is an inclusive class, they just went through all the 19 instruction and all the kids are in their squads, happy, excited, they are no part of 20 that. 21 22 Then they came in the class and they all had these weighted vests on and looked like 23 they were in Catholic school, it really made them stand out, so they were late, had 24 the vests on and missed instruction, is that inclusion? 25 26 That's what I'm going to talk about today is some inclusion strategies where we can 27 alleviate some of these issues and hopefully empower our teachers and educators to 28 really include kids with disabilities and encourage their peers to accept them for 29 who they are. 30 31 So I ran across this piece of research a few years ago, I think it is so powerful, 32 it's by Falvey, Givener and Kim from 1995, it says when kids feel included they leave 33 the class proud, feeling special, comfortable, recognised, confident, excited, happy, 34 cared about, liked, appreciated and positive. Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 27 1 2 Now how many of you out there are students, since there is people with visual 3 impairments here I'm going to ask you to clap, how many are students here, clap your 4 hands please? 5 6 And how many of you are practitioners and teach, clap your hands? 7 8 I'm sure that being here your motivation and enthusiasm, your kids leave your gym 9 feeling this way and this is what our goal is, so in this study they said when kids 10 felt excluded like these classes that I saw, they felt angry, resentful, hurt, 11 frustrated, lonely, different, confused, isolated and this is the one that kills me 12 -- worthless and invisible. 13 14 So making that effort to ensure that children are included is so important, it didn't 15 even occur to this teacher why don't I go get them and bring them back, or two 16 teacher aids, why doesn't one go get the kids and one take the kids back? But you 17 have to have that mindset of true inclusion, it shouldn't be on paper, it should be a 18 reality. 19 20 And that's why some of you might know my colleague Dr Cathy Houston Wilson, she and I 21 co-authored a book called strategies for inclusion, it's basic strategies, a 22 non-categorical book on how do we include children with disabilities, it does include 23 a few of the topics I'll talk about today. 24 25 But how do we meet the standard of true inclusion? And just to keep in mind that 26 adapted physical education, at least in our country, the law says it's a service that 27 we provide, it's not the placement. So even when kids are in a segregated class they 28 still need to feel part of their school and community. Also that every child has the 29 right to learn what their peers learn, and I'm just go to have to take a TV time out, 30 this just happened this month. 31 32 I'm on a board of the journal of physical education, recreation and dance and about 33 two months ago I wrote an editorial just about the ethics of inclusion, one of the 34 things that I feel strongly about and I checked with many of my colleagues, is that Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 28 1 there is no adapted physical education curriculum. 2 3 Children with disabilities are children first, so our curriculum for kids with 4 disabilities should mirror their peers, if they are learning badminton children with 5 disabilities are learning badminton, it should mirror the regular physical education 6 curriculum, how we deliver the curriculum might be different and it very often will 7 be. 8 9 So one of our very popular colleagues, one of you in the US might have seen this 10 article, wrote an article that said that the adapted curriculum, we should really 11 limit what kids with disabilities should learn because they probably can't master all 12 of the units in the general physical education curriculum. 13 14 How many of you mastered every unit that you went through in physical education? 15 Think about it! I think I would, they would have put me in basketball the entire 16 year, because I'm not good at basketball, I like it but that's not fair. How many 17 able bodied kids master a unit? Why do we expect kids with disabilities to set a 18 different standards from them and limit what they can do? And the whole -- this is 19 why I feel like we're not in conjunction with special education, and I really liked 20 what Jim was talking about, that we really need to get on the same page with special 21 education, because special education promotes self determination, and self 22 determination is giving children choices and options for their lives. 23 24 If we limit kids to two or three units their whole lives because they can't master 25 the ones that we provide for everyone, are they going to really be self determined? 26 And so you don't have to agree with me, but I really feel strongly that kids with 27 disabilities don't have to master a unit before they move on with their peers, they 28 should do the best that they can and give them practice opportunities if they are 29 behind. So I could talk about that all day, but we have to move on. 30 31 So again children with disabilities should be held to the same standards as their 32 peers, but not held back if they don't meet those standards because we don't hold the 33 children who are able bodied back. Then also that achievement is the goal, not just 34 participation and I really like what Vicky talked about, because she is talking about Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 29 1 not letting athletes just participate, let's get them to the optimal level. The same 2 thing goes for children in physical education. 3 4 How many of you have seen just because someone has a disability everybody is clapping 5 and cheering, oh they are running, isn't that right, they are swimming, all right! 6 But they can do it so much better but we don't push them, because we think they have 7 a disability it's so nice that they are even here, on paper! 8 9 So the rest of this presentation I'm going to touch on disability awareness, which I 10 think is very important, working with support staff and then the universal design for 11 learning. 12 13 My students work with children with a variety of different disabilities and I think 14 that does help with disability awareness and this is actually level three of 15 disability awareness as you'll see. 16 17 So why should we do disability awareness? How many of you do some type of disability 18 awareness, clap twice? 19 20 So a lot of you are already doing this, so you have an understanding that it's 21 increasing understanding, improving attitudes towards people with disabilities, 22 increases socialisation and friendships and then decreases teasing and ridicule and I 23 think what Donna spoke about yesterday really hit home with a lot of us, that even 24 people of all ages, if they don't understand someone they might ridicule, tease or 25 demean that person. 26 27 So I modeled this after Karen de Paul, some of you might remember when we had the 28 whole inclusion push Karen had this model of level 1, 2 and 3, this is similar to her 29 work. 30 31 But level 1 is just saying let's expose kids to people with disabilities, we have 32 speakers, articles, stories on a website, books, you can watch a disability sporting 33 event and we can access a lot of this on the web, and level 1 is also based on social 34 constructivism. I'm sure all of you know about social constructivism, but the idea Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 30 1 that our attitudes are only as broad as our experiences. The more experiences we 2 have the more open minded and better our attitudes will be towards different 3 disability groups. And so the picture on this slide is a little boy swimming with no 4 arms, and if some of you have seen this little boy maybe in a train station or in a 5 school you might have thought, Oh geez he has a disability he wouldn't be able to do 6 anything like that, but he swims independently, once you meet him and you know that, 7 that broadens your perspective of what people with no arms can do. 8 9 I have to tell you a funny story, Judith Gombas is my friend, when I first met her 10 she e-mailed me said I'm teacher, I live in Hungary can I volunteer at your camp, I 11 said sure, come on to my camp, she goes from Budapest, and she is like no I'll meet 12 you at the airport, so we meet her at the airport, one night I said we were talking 13 about kids going outside your comfort zone, doing something uncomfortable and pushing 14 yourself to do better, I said do you mind talking about how you travelled 15 independently from Budapest? And how you went outside your comfort zone? She said 16 Lauren I didn't go outside my comfort zone, and -- so next year when I went to travel 17 to Budapest to visit her, I thought about how she did he that whole trip and she is 18 blind, and how her saying that that wasn't outside my comfort zone, that really 19 opened my eyes a lot, I would have thought it might have been difficult, some part of 20 the trip might have been difficult, but not for her. 21 22 Bottom line is expose students to a variety of people with disabilities and skills 23 and accomplishments the more open minded they will be. Even people in the field for 24 years and years, we're still learning, right? 25 26 So maybe here in Ireland, I know everybody knows Jason Smith, how many people have 27 already talked about Jason, he is visually impaired and he is one of the Irish 28 paralympic runners so exposing students to paralympic athletes or Mark Rohan you can 29 link on that website and see him doing his cycling. 30 31 So those are some ideas for level 1 of disability awareness. 32 33 Level 2 might be simulate the disability, play a sport with that disability and so I 34 have videos of sit volley ball, which I know Ferhat did a wonderful job introducing Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 31 1 it yesterday, wheelchair basketball, tabletop cricket, Martin introduced me to 2 tabletop cricket I never would have known about that. Go through activities of daily 3 living with a disability, go to class or work with a disability. 4 5 Some examples are use a wheelchair to go through the day, maybe if you have a job 6 waitressing or a job do it with a visual impairment or simulation. 7 8 This week we learned blind soccer, thank you to Warren, power soccer, Liam, beep 9 baseball and the Halliwick method of teaching swimming, and these are some examples 10 of level 2 of disability awareness. 11 12 Then level 3 would be ownership. Take it upon yourselves to make the lives of people 13 with disabilities better, for example peer tutoring, if you get your children, the 14 kids you work with to the level of peer tutors then they reach level 3 of disability 15 awareness. How many of you have raised funds for the cystic fibrosis or diabetes or 16 MS, clap twice if you raised funds or disability? So we are all level 3, see. 17 18 Advocate for rights such as interpreters, be a guide runner for a race for a person 19 who is blind, that's a level 3 of disability awareness. Some of our students have 20 set up wheelchair basketball games at a half time of a college game and then maybe 21 set up tabletop cricket during a school assembly, and I'm sure if you thought more 22 and more about it, you'd think of other level 3 of disability awareness. And the 23 goal is to get to level 3 as I was saying. 24 25 So in summary, this picture here is actually a Bocce tournament that the students 26 from UL set up last semester it was really awesome, that's a total level 3 disability 27 awareness, it was wonderful to see all these people had the opportunity to have a 28 Bocce competition because of what they did. So implementing disability awareness is 29 so important and in most cases it's free, I don't understand why more people don't do 30 it. Be sensitive, have fun and be creative, and one of the things I caution people 31 is make sure that the voice of people with disabilities are part of it before you do 32 some type of simulation, maybe check with that disability community and make sure you 33 are doing it in a sensitive way. 34 Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 32 1 Then the next thing I want to talk about is some teacher aids, now I know in Brazil 2 they call them teacher aids, we in the US the term they give themselves is 3 para-educators, in Ireland they called them Special Needs Assistants, either way if 4 you want to do inclusion you can't teach without them. If they are part of the 5 classroom class and they come into your gym you need their help. 6 7 So the idea, the truth is that children with disabilities learn more with smaller 8 ratios, and the physical education teachers is responsible for all the kids and the 9 teachers aid can help in many, many ways, so what is a teacher aid defined as it's a 10 person who works alongside of the teacher, a specialist and administrator in a 11 school. It's either one-to-one or small group instruction and one thing I found out, 12 it's important to find out what their contract says, sometimes their contract might 13 say that they don't have to go to physical education. You can change that, but you 14 have to find out what does it say. 15 16 So just the benefits of a teacher aid are extra set of eyes, hands, they can help 17 support the teacher in decision-making related to behaviour or modifications and also 18 can bring information to the teacher about the disabilities of the student and then 19 they can help with a variety of teaching related duties, that's what we use them for. 20 21 This is just saying some of the different roles and again classroom management, 22 behaviour management, they can give input on individual plans and they can help with 23 assessments too which is really wonderful. 24 25 So I realise a few years ago that we did a study and the PE teachers thought that the 26 Special Ed people should train the para-educators, the Special Ed people thought PE 27 people should train the paras and there was no training programme, at least in our 28 country there was no training. So we got a grant to write a book now we have the 29 book called para-educators in physical education, a training guide to roles and 30 responsibilities. 31 32 Now this is exciting, this came out in 2007 and I know that some people are using it, 33 but I just finished a study in the US, 143 teachers and teacher aids, parents, 92% of 34 the kids had a teacher aid that went with them to physical education, 92%. None of Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 33 1 them were trained for physical education. 2 3 Now they were trained for the classroom and other academic areas, but not for 4 physical education, so right now we are in the process of creating a video to go with 5 this to help train para-educators that will be free and you can even get continuing 6 education credits to watch the video. 7 8 So even though they have mechanisms in place we have to be the ones advocating the 9 training, because from that scenario I told you at the beginning, without the 10 training I don't think that they are really going to know their job and what to do. 11 So some training at the beginning of the year is really important. 12 13 So the training and this is just some of the elements of the training, what is 14 physical education, what are the roles and responsibilities of that teacher aid? How 15 are they going to help you with assessment, behaviour management, instruction and 16 feedback, a lot of them don't know how to instruct and give feedback in physical 17 education, that's important, modifications, obviously and collaboration, how would 18 they collaborate with you, with physical therapists with the classroom teacher, 19 parent, that's important, and then definitely safety. 20 21 Then lastly I just want to talk about the universal design for learning. I know that 22 I'm pretty sure Jim touched on this yesterday, but some of us use this and some of us 23 might not have thought but it, but the universal design for learning is the concept 24 that instead of writing the modification at the bottom of a lesson plan, we don't 25 wait and write it as an after thought, you actually infuse variables into your lesson 26 that would accommodate every child that walked into your class. 27 28 And so this idea of universal design for learning started with architecture in the 29 1990s, related to new buildings, elevators, curb cuts and then spread to reading, and 30 I don't know about your country but in our country kids were receiving textbooks, 31 kids who were blind received textbooks in November, because they made the textbook in 32 small print then decided to do it in braille, so when the universal design came to 33 the reading area they would put it on a computer and they could just press a button 34 and it would come out in braille, large print, small print, audio versions, so Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 34 1 universal design spread to many other areas, closed captions on the TV are not just 2 for people who are deaf, it's for people in a loud room, English might not be their 3 first language -- and so how do we infuse this concept of UDL in physical education 4 and not think of children with disabilities as an after thought? 5 6 So of course you have to plan ahead and a lot of times I feel people don't really 7 think of all the variables ahead of time. Provide all the variables related to 8 instruction, equipment, and we have to set up a culture of acceptance of difference 9 and so every teacher has to be thinking about this beforehand and all level of 10 performance must be considered. 11 12 For example not just the way they are taught but also the way they are tested, we 13 have to have variations in assessment as well. And we can use variations using 14 colours, levels, numbers, rubrics, stations, different types of fitness -- I have one 15 person say they can't do jump rope because they can't jump rope, I said there is a 16 lot of different ways to jump rope, you don't have to jump rope swinging the rope 17 over the chair, you can jump rope in a lot of different ways. 18 19 So the benefits of universal design, you think about your own school and your own 20 curriculum, how is considering universal design going to help your programme and your 21 curriculum? Who might have been sitting on the side or struggling to fit in, that 22 universally designing a lesson wouldn't help? 23 24 These are equipment, thanks to Sean Healy, Sean and Jenny are doing great work 25 related to low cost equipment, these are some of the areas of equipment, different 26 colours, textures, weights of equipment, sound balls, textures balls, lighter balls, 27 and that presentation yesterday that you guys did was amazing and it's exactly what 28 we are talking about, making variations in games and activities to include everyone. 29 30 How many of you are surprised sometimes you make a modification and some of the able 31 bodied kids are like I'm going to use that one, because it's not just for the kids 32 with disabilities. 33 34 Some other variables you might consider are rules, the environment, the instruction Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 35 1 and many other things related to that child coming to your class. I even think of 2 getting to the class on time and having a place in the squad is part of the universal 3 design. How do we make sure they can be included in every aspect of that class, from 4 the minute the able bodied kids walk in till the minute they leave? 5 6 So some examples are jump rope unit, how would you modify a jump rope unit, a hurling 7 unit, a soccer or football unit, a physical activity using pedometers, what if a 8 person is visually impaired and can't see it, what if the person doesn't understand 9 the concept of numbers, how would you infuse a physical activity unit using 10 pedometers with everyone? Tennis, how about cricket? We have tabletop cricket but 11 what are some other variables will he late to universal design for some of these 12 units? 13 14 So I guess some questions are: Should children with disabilities learn the same 15 units as their peers? And do you feel that there are other variables that you can 16 change to make your kids more included? 17 18 So those are my three major areas that I wanted to give to everyone, I know that 19 we're really just touching on some of the inclusion strategies, if I had more time I 20 would actually talk a little more in depth about all these, but as I said, our 21 strategies for inclusion book also has information about training peer tutors if 22 anybody is interested in training peer tutors, that has a training of peer tutors in 23 that book and then also some of you might have seen the new book essentials of 24 adapted physical education has a lot of the concepts in it, there is a whole chapter 25 on training support staff in there as well. 26 27 So thank you everyone and I'm open for questions. 28 29 MR O'FLYNN: We can get a mic to anybody who want to ask a question? While we're 30 waiting for that, Dr Lieberman has been committed completely to this congress 31 involved in every part of it, social and otherwise, just a little presentation. 32 Thank you so much. 33 34 Q. Thank you very much Lauren, do you think it is more beneficial for the child that you Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 36 1 do either maybe a skipping unit or introduce a unit specifically for the child, let's 2 say with multiple disabilities would you ever see a need for that? 3 DR LIEBERMAN: That's a good question, when we did the beep baseball presentation 4 yesterday, whether you have kids with visual impairments in your class or not, I 5 think it's great to infuse some of the paralympic or disability sports into your 6 class if it's possible. I do think that there are times when you might need to make 7 two versions of a game, if that you have type of room, and I don't think there is a 8 problem with doing that, but I also feel really strongly that when you do that, two 9 or three versions of a game, that you always have kids who are able bodied cycling 10 in, so they understand the modifications needed and variables. 11 12 I don't know about anybody else, but when the peers learn what benefits the children 13 with disabilities they are more likely to include them on the playground, at the bus 14 stop, in their neighbourhood, so having all the kids their age group cycle around and 15 see the games, how do they play volleyball? How do they play soccer? And then they 16 are more likely to include them later on. 17 18 I also think it's important for kids who are able bodied to have the disability 19 awareness and to learn a variation of the games. Does that answer your question? 20 21 People don't have to agree with me, there are people who feel very strongly they 22 should be off in the corner working on IEP goals and I don't think that's -- when I'm 23 talking about inclusion, even when a child is in a segregated class, there are still 24 things we can do to make them feel included and be included in the school, for 25 example cross age peer tutoring. 26 27 Q. I would like to ask a question about the concept of physical education, do you have 28 different chances to do sports or do you have a specific approach to do education 29 with physical activity? Because sometimes -- we have differences in the concepts of 30 American style or traditional style and physical education as a general, to learn 31 through physical activity not learning sports. 32 DR LIEBERMAN: That's a really good question Maria. Actually in the US we have 33 national standards and the national standards talk about level -- standard number one 34 is fitness, so we have to include fitness in the unit, a unit of fitness throughout. Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 37 1 But that's not all they learn, it also says kids need to learn motor skills, sports 2 and games, individual activities and aquatics, so there should be a variety and 3 related to kids with visual impairments, I feel strongly that there should be open 4 and closed sports. 5 6 Because even though closed sports are easier to teach with kids with visual 7 impairments, they still need to learn the open sport games, for example how would you 8 ever follow the world series, everybody is talking about it, if you never played 9 baseball, how are you going to fit in a conversation? How are you going to 10 understand what people are talking about? So not just so you experience it to see if 11 you like it, but also so that you can fit in a conversation. 12 13 Socialisation is a big part of what we are trying to facilitate with kids with and 14 without disabilities. So I hope that answers your question. But I do also think 15 that in all sport curriculum is not okay, that is not going to make everybody feel 16 included. 17 18 Q. Thank you so much I have a question, many countries we provide 45-minutes for PE 19 class and approximately 20 to 30 students in class, in many countries they provide 20 one and half hour with 50 students in class, from the standpoint of inclusion, what 21 would be your recommendation of this idea? 22 DR LIEBERMAN: I think an hour and a half would be hard for anybody to pay attention 23 or be active that long every time you have class, I would like to break it up into 24 cognitive, effective, and psychomotor part of class, and that's a great time for 25 skill development and assessment. Does that help? 26 27 MR O'FLYNN: I'm afraid we do have to wrap it up, will you be here for the expert 28 discussion later on? So if anybody has additional questions -- 29 30 DR LIEBERMAN: Wait, at 2.30 we are going to have ultimate Frisbee for anybody who 31 wants to play on the tennis courts, outside on the tennis courts ultimate Frisbee, 32 bring sneakers and shorts and we'll have a great game. 33 34 MR O'FLYNN: Thank you very much Dr Lauren Lieberman. Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 38 1 2 Next in this room is Alan Ringland who will be presenting on a qualitative study of 3 paralympic success factors. Can I remind anyone going to the practical session for 4 inclusion games at 12 o'clock, can you meet in Muckross B please. 5 6 End of Presentation 7 8 CHAIR: Okay if I do a little bit of housekeeping while we are waiting for the last 9 few people to come in, a reminder for people who haven't checked out if you can check 10 out after this session if you are staying in the hotel. 11 12 Second thing is if you could upload your photos at the photo desk in the lobby if you 13 want them to be included in the EUCAPA website which would be fantastic, so if you 14 have any photos please upload those. 15 16 Also the final thing is reminder for people to fill in evaluation forms, so if you 17 can fill them in and put them in the boxes outside, that will be brilliant. Is that 18 okay. 19 20 Alan Ringland, my name is Karen Weeks I work in IT Tralee, this is Alan, Dr Alan 21 Ringland who also works in IT Tralee. Alan has worked and is working with Olympic 22 and Paralympic athletes, he is going to London in 2012 and he is going to talk to us 23 a little today about Paralympic success factors and other elements that are relating 24 to 2012. 25 26 Alan Ringland: Paralympic success factors: a qualitative study. 27 28 DR RINGLAND: Thanks Karen, I'll try and keep this not necessarily short, but just to 29 the success factors rather than anything else. 30 31 In terms of the Irish context given that it's an Irish day, we conducted a study 32 together with UCD, University of Ulster and National Institute of Sport to look at 33 success factors with able bodied and paralympic, we didn't segregate, wanted to look 34 at both and a number of the factors came up that actually working with us is a very Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 39 1 positive one and we had a number of issues in terms of organisational factors and a 2 lot of intrinsic and motivational factors such as the fact that most Irish athletes 3 enjoy the competition, they enjoy the sport and if that was gone from that 4 environment they would leave, but in one sense we all know that anyway, if we don't 5 enjoy things more likely that you'll leave anyway, so nothing new, but something we 6 may think about when we actually bring, not necessarily kids into it, but at the very 7 high top performance level. 8 9 Because training and performing at a high Paralympic level, that gets lost because it 10 becomes very much organisational factors such as we need a medal, we're looking to 11 win, looking to break a world record. We push the whole performance end totally, 12 then we'll lose some of those intrinsic factors. 13 14 Some of the negative factors of the 2008 study, basically public perception, that 15 comes from able bodied Olympians as well as Paralympics, they don't get a huge amount 16 of media coverage. This year we're lucky because it's so close, the fact that the 17 BBC, Channel 4 are well sponsored the fact that Setanta are going to show every 18 single Irish performance and also RTE will give some coverage of Paralympics and the 19 Paralympic sports, so in one sense that's increasing, but still hasn't really 20 evolved, but four years ago this would have been a big factor, nobody knew really 21 what it was about. 22 23 Would you believe the weather is the biggest factor for Irish athletes in sport 24 because they can't train, because it rains all the time! Certainly if you have been 25 in Kerry, I have been in London the last few days at a test event, even saying that 26 being over there it rained, so literally getting out and training is quite a 27 resilient factor for some, but for others it's quite negative, they don't feel they 28 can get into the performance environment and the appropriate one, despite the fact 29 that I have to say, really they need to be controlling all those factors, so no 30 matter what, the weather is, it's something we can't control, therefore it's not 31 worth worrying about. 32 33 Another of the biggest factors was the selection process. For Paralympics 34 especially, even coming up to 2012 the teams have not been selected yet, they won't Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 40 1 be selected until the end of May or 1st June, I know we have six qualifiers in 2 athletics, we know we'll only get probably 8 places, Jason Smith who you have seen 3 regularly over the past few days has not actually qualified yet despite having 10.2, 4 100 metre time because it was not a sanctioned event with the Paralympics, he will be 5 running in one or two this month, but in that sense, that's where they are in terms 6 of selection. 7 8 In terms of another factor is balance of lifestyle, communication with the governing 9 body, which has been a huge factor in terms of unpublished studies and debrief 10 reports, that that organisational factor working with the sports body is quite a 11 tender one, a poor one for many of them and we used to have a carding scheme in this 12 country, now it's gone, which provided financial support and whether it was 13 physiology, physiotherapy, psychology, biomechanics, nutrition, that has gone, it was 14 re changed and given to a sport, but given the economic crisis that exists around 15 Europe and especially in Ireland, that has been totally watered down. 16 17 (video playing) 18 19 I suppose in terms of the history of the Paralympics, definitely the largest multi 20 sport event in the world for elite athletes, certainly my role as a psychologist in 21 the Irish Paralympic team has been certainly a challenging one, but also a very 22 interesting one, because the amount of sports, the amount of disabilities, the amount 23 of categorisations within that and the change even within a four-year cycle over that 24 with people being reclassified has a huge impact upon them. 25 26 Huge increase in numbers 400 back in 1960, 4,000 four years ago. 27 28 If you ever go on to do any searching on Paralympic sport or performance environment, 29 it starts with about 1,000, if you put it in with Paralympic research it goes down to 30 12, and if you put in with a coach you may get one, so research capabilities are 31 quite open, there is a huge amount that there is a need for, I think probably the 32 biggest need in terms of science is within this discipline of Paralympics, in terms 33 of certainly Vicky was talking about technological, wheelchair and the specifics 34 biomechanics and ergonomics, all of that, there has been a huge impact in the last Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 41 1 decade. 2 3 The other success in high performance sport is really what factors give to the 4 countries involved, certainly there is a huge amount in performance, your funding is 5 dependent upon your results, not necessarily about including everybody, it's about 6 just winning and that has a huge area. 7 8 Organisational factors, performers, coaches, national governing bodies as well as the 9 society feel good factor. 10 11 This research in term it is of this is basically a qualitative interview with coaches 12 and athletes together as well as focus groups, but in terms of the research behind 13 that there are very few interview studies done with coaches which is quite strange 14 really, they give us quite a different insight into what performance and success 15 performance is as oppose to athletes and sports scientists and certainly as oppose to 16 administrators it would be interesting to actually look at each report done how 17 different they all are. 18 19 One of my interests in this research is let's find out how the coach perceives the 20 success factors in Paralympic performance and they should be seen a important. 21 22 So the objectives of this is to investigate the performance environment of Paralympic 23 athletes and coaches post international competition, so basically from 2009 right up 24 to 2012, the second objective is to examine in detail the factors affecting athletes 25 and coaches in that Paralympic environment. 26 27 Methodology, I don't want to bore you too much, I see the students going here comes 28 methodology. Two focus groups two coaches and 16 athletes of different sports, 29 Ireland is so small in terms of people and sports involved some of you may know them 30 in terms of confidentiality I won't do it. After that interview process with three 31 athletes and one coach, specific interview guide, the normal probes I'll give you 32 examples in a minute, they were initially contacted by e-mail, straightaway after the 33 event and asked would they like to partake in this and that's what happened from the 34 response rate. Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 42 1 2 16 of them diverse age range, 15 to 45, not a bad, it's a little old for mean age, 3 but even going to London I think the age range will go from 15 to 62! And that person 4 has actually come back out of retirement since Beijing and has been very successful 5 in the last six months when he came out, so you think wow! And that is another aspect 6 in the fact they leave it for a couple of years and something is lost, they are 7 missing something and therefore they are actually stepping back in and possibly 8 trying to compete again. 9 10 In terms of the age range and playing experience, novice from 12 years -- this sample 11 of five different sports. Coaching staff is age diverse, the mean age about 41, some 12 of 5 years experience and some getting... 13 14 All interviews were tape-recorded and lasted between 30 minutes and 80 minutes, 15 interviews were transcribed and combined with notes taken at the time in terms of 16 behaviours and gestures and obviously the confidentiality and ethics on procedures 17 were always adhered to. 18 19 Sample of the questionnaires, basically how long have you done, background 20 information, expectations, some of the examples of question, not necessarily the 21 probes, why did the team/individual perform the way it did and can you describe an 22 example? Can you go into more detail, what other factors were included? What were 23 the best elements of the last competition? Can you -- probes given all the time. 24 What factors positively influenced the team or individual performance? And how was 25 that? Another sample question, how can we help coaches and performers perform at the 26 next event? So they were asked for each perception of what the coach or performer 27 were doing, because coaches tend to give that opinion while athletes tend not to give 28 -- I suppose their perception of what the coach or leadership factors were involved 29 in. 30 31 Focus groups conducted within two weeks of performance and interviews taken in three 32 weeks, a week later. 33 34 I said that, interviews tape-recorded transcribed content analysed, I'm sure a lot of Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 43 1 you are familiar. Three main things, categorisable quotes, moved data into first 2 themes and done from a number of previous performance environment papers that had 3 been, the most recent would have been from Loughborough I think, Chris Harwood and 4 Matthew Payne and then we were into -- 24 of those were categorised into five 5 dimensions. 6 7 So first one general dimension was support, and athletes and coaches said that, huge 8 difference between received support and perceived support, within that you say what 9 do you mean? Well some received support could have been I was given financial aid 10 towards that, which would be received support. While others would have been 11 perceived support, the fact that somebody from the family was there supporting them 12 or around or in the environment, they may have seen that as a factor that actually 13 included in that. 14 15 Other support factors were the influence, especially in Ireland that family has on 16 that, a huge influence, that's been done over a number of unpublished studies done 17 which used to be the National Coaching and Training Centre, now called Coaching 18 Ireland, those are available online. 19 20 The other factors were the athletes themselves suggested that the coaches had a huge 21 positive effect, all these are positive. I'd be here for two days if we went into 22 negative factors as well. 23 24 Personal issues, the five rather than go through quotes, basically the control, the 25 planning and preparation, there were a lot of awareness factors, it was interesting 26 one quote, a coach said we're not going to medal in London, but if we make it to 27 fourth or fifth we'll be relatively happy and that, in that sense at least the 28 expectation is there from the coach that they are not going for glory and it won't be 29 a huge disappointment in the end because it's a sport in Ireland anyway that only 30 just started, but the perception of the athletes is actually quite different, they 31 actually expect to medal. Even though they are ranked I think sixth in the world at 32 this stage. 33 34 Other personal issue, intrinsically motivated, huge amount about identity, I compete Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 44 1 in whatever -- I compete in the BC 4 event in Bocce, I'm playing against people who 2 have the same level and ability as myself, all in the top such and such in the world, 3 therefore they have an identity in that as well. So sometimes the categories I have 4 to say this can't be right, especially in swimming, but that's unfortunately not my 5 factor. 6 7 The other main personal issue was balance, what they did with education, work, family 8 and personal life, that whole lifestyle argument is still something we haven't got to 9 grips with. 10 11 Psychological skills, goal setting, there are quotes there, I knew where I was going 12 and how to get there. Self-confidence building, that's self-confidence, 13 concentration, so they knew the preparation and routine, how to follow it on. 14 Preparation, visualisation and coping skills, I have to have say working with both 15 Olympic and Paralympic the resilience factor for Paralympic athletes is much better 16 than Olympic, able bodied athletes. 17 18 Training and competition would be another factor in terms of preparation, it was 19 physical and mental, another factor in terms of giving 40 minute naps or sleeps in 20 the day, had to be organised appropriately so we could get support to put some of 21 them to bed, to stay with them, all of those factors are huge in Paralympic sport in 22 Ireland, the travelling time, amount of time to get off a plane, even on to a bus, so 23 in London at the weekend we were on at 11 o'clock, we left at half past 7, the 24 journey time on the bus was 15 minutes, so it's quite a long day in terms of 25 preparation, ideally you want an hour beforehand for warm up etcetera. 26 27 Simulation, we got much better in Ireland in terms of trying to mirror what's 28 happening, especially in Paralympic Games which really is a media circus, totally 29 different to any other international competition, world championships, the 30 Paralympics and Olympics is totally different, incredible different experience. 31 32 The environment, physiological as well in terms of getting the right practice and 33 tapering and obviously an individual approach on that. 34 Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 45 1 Leadership, very supportive again, good coaching, team support, very positive, social 2 and task performance, in other words they liked the idea that they can do group and 3 one-on-one and both and mixed, they liked the idea of different ways of exploring 4 information and discussion, they didn't actually like -- right we're all sitting 5 here, doing a debrief after this, they liked to mirror and try different things. 6 7 The other one, no tension, there were five athletes, it was interesting, because 8 sometimes performance is much better when there is a little tension or conflict, but 9 that's from five of them. 10 11 Conclusions, very personal, very multi faceted, it depends on the environment, on the 12 sport, where the sport actually is, the practice under pressure, the more we can 13 simulate that appropriately the better. I'll give you another example from the 14 weekend since it's fresh in my head, a world champion from a different country who 15 put down the jack straight in front of him, I'd say 99.9% of the time would put it 16 exactly where it was, but a foot and a half away, so I thought oh what happened, how 17 will they cope and what happened? But it's those types of, where you need to be put 18 under pressure, Beijing was a great example, went to the competition area early, if 19 you are not on to day 3 or 4, get a feel for the environment, there is 91,000 people 20 and there is noise, this expectation, this is really where I want to be, but for some 21 it was God no! And getting used to that more and more is something that we'll have to 22 do. 23 24 Cohesiveness didn't come from that sample but that would be normal from the 25 debriefing process that goes on that the team needs to be a little together, look out 26 for each other and stay together. Preparation is a good one and the support factors 27 that are going on around them that means family, coaches, personal assistants and so 28 forth. 29 30 I'm just going to let these roll and I'll take questions. These are just some 31 examples while I take some questions. 32 33 CHAIR: While Alan is getting set up, have we any questions for Alan from anybody in 34 the audience? Don't all put up your hands at once! I have a question, can I ask one Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 46 1 question? 2 3 Q. The difference between, you talk about resilience and everything, but the difference, 4 an example of the difference between working with Paralympic and Olympics from a 5 sports science perspective? 6 DR RINGLAND: Paralympians tend not to "moan" as much, in other words they have had a 7 number of factors in their life that they have been able to resolve and come to terms 8 with and cope, Olympians tend to say hold on a minute, you need to put this out for 9 me -- where is my red carpet, so I would say in that sense their identity of their 10 life structure prior to that they have learned to be challenged the way through their 11 career as opposed to able bodied, that would be the easiest factor. 12 13 CHAIR: Okay thanks very much to Alan Ringland and we'll wrap up the lecture there. 14 Thank you. Thanks Alan. 15 16 End of Presentation 17 18 David Howe: The wobbly ethnographer: Empowered researcher or vulnerable observer. 19 20 CHAIR: Welcome I'd like to introduce David Howe from Loughborough University. We're 21 running a bit late so we'll get going. 22 23 MR HOWE: Can everyone hear me? Can you hear me at the back? Okay I don't feel 24 comfortable using a microphone so I'm just going to talk normally, I think in these 25 small rooms and small groups of people it makes it more intimate if you don't use a 26 microphone and if I can't speak to a room this size I shouldn't be in the lecturing 27 profession! 28 29 The presentation I'm giving today, the practice of research for me in the past as an 30 ethnographer has been a bit like Chuck Norris the actor when he is in the Lone Wolf 31 McQuaid movies. 32 33 Perhaps it's the amount of time I spent in the pursuit of the loneliness of a long 34 distance runner, but I always stuck to doing my research as a solo adventure. Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 47 1 2 But a question began to, a couple of years ago a question started to cross my mind 3 about what I perceived to be the low quality of social research within APA, because 4 of this belief at the time, I began to think that it might be appropriate in the 5 connection of research and to make up for my own inadequacies to start to buddy up in 6 terms of research. Two heads and two bodies may in fact be better than one. 7 8 This to me was a bit of a, or is a bit of, what Lennon would say as an Imagine 9 moment. I want to you start to think about the practice of doing ethnography 10 somewhat differently. 11 12 The sensuous nature of ethnography means a balanced team can be really useful, our 13 team, myself and Carla Silva combines impaired and non-impaired experience of the 14 world. 15 16 And as a result we are able to limit many of the ethical issues that are confronted 17 by ethnographers who are using traditional methods. 18 19 The terms wobbly in this presentation has a number of meanings, on one level it's a 20 statement of how the ethnographer can feel out of place in particular social 21 settings. This may have something to do with the quality of my dancing last night, 22 the fish out of water approach to dancing that I have, but it was not the intent of 23 this presentation! 24 25 On another level, wobbly, there may be an understanding or a misunderstanding of 26 what's going on in the community under investigation. The relationships and power 27 struggle that goes on within that environment. It may be also the case that 28 ethnographic contexts primarily discuss that below that of sitting volleyball, is an 29 important area to have a contextual understanding of a particular culture. 30 31 To be wobbly is to be liminal, in a liminal state as Turner would suggest, and to be 32 aware of the body and if as social researcher and people working in APA as 33 practitioners aren't aware of the fragile nature of our existence in the human body 34 it becomes hugely problematic. Academics, researchers and advocates in the broader Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 48 1 feel of Adapted Physical Activities need to bear in mind that everyone's body is 2 fragile. 3 4 Being wobbly is about the need to balance life in the field, so that research quality 5 is maintained without harming the community. 6 7 In this paper my colleague and I will draw upon data where there is an interesting 8 twist in the dynamic between the ethnographer and the informer in the field of study. 9 10 About a year and a half ago as part of a project which is undertaken by Carla looking 11 at the development of sitting volleyball in the UK which she spoke about eloquently 12 earlier in the conference, we made a trip to the city of Rummage, for those of you 13 from the UK and familiar with UK literature, Rummage is a fictitious place used by 14 the literary scholar David Lodge when he critiques academic worlds and so on. 15 16 So at Rummage and at their university we were engaged in what was a grass-roots 17 sitting volleyball programme. And I was basically acting as the driver, for my PhD 18 student. 19 20 But what transpired in this, on this day was that we went to this grass roots sitting 21 volleyball setting and there were loads of carers there with individuals with 22 impairments, with a variety of impairments, with mental health issues as well, and so 23 on and so forth. 24 25 And while Carla went up to tell them who she was and explain why she was there, I 26 just sat in the background and low and behold within 15 minutes, I was on a sitting 27 volleyball court. I had not gone there to attend a sitting volleyball training 28 programme. But it became evident to me, and reflecting upon this, that they hadn't 29 questioned why I was there, I was somebody with an impairment, I was at a sitting 30 volleyball programme in the community and therefore I must be there to engage in 31 sitting volleyball, they didn't ask me any questions about myself, who I was, or any 32 of this sort of information. 33 34 So while Carla was there to get names of people that were willing to sign up for semi Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 49 1 structured interviews to be part of her PhD research, I became a participant in this 2 project, and I failed at that moment to set the record straight. I didn't put my 3 hand up and say actually I'm the guy who has the car and I'm the supervisor in this 4 research project, I was implicit in engaging in the activity. 5 6 And this is by way of introduction to the wobbly ethnographer. What follows in the 7 next 12 to 15 minutes or so is an exploration of the tensions that we have in APA 8 circles surrounding the perceptions associated with our embodiment, the assumption 9 that because I'm a spaz, I was there to engage in that project, I was there to engage 10 with the other people within the community. 11 12 It is hoped that this paper will enable others to engage in social cultural research 13 that is more constantly aware of how our bodies act as vessels, not only for our own 14 interpretations of the social world, but other's interpretations of us. 15 16 There are serious ethical issues that need to be explored, both before addressing the 17 whole ramifications of the scenario of an unintended consequence of me taking a 18 student along to a research opportunity. 19 20 The exploration of the position at of the researcher in the field is really important 21 and it's really influential and something that needs to be exposed within APA 22 environments. As practitioners we need to be constantly aware of our position within 23 this field. 24 25 So within the Paralympic movement I have some experience, I'm a former Paralympic 26 athlete, I was involved in track and field athletics and I haven't put it there but I 27 am a body fascist, I believe that the body has to be trained in a certain way and I 28 do not like people that are not elite highly trained athletes attending the 29 Paralympic Games, that's a bad sale for our sport. 30 31 I have an expectation that all Paralympic athletes are elite individuals. My 32 colleague Carla has said there in a very humble way, an able volleyball player, but 33 as a six aside volleyball player and then more recently as a beach volleyball player 34 who is able to win money playing the game, she adopts the same elite sporting Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 50 1 habitus, but the expectation that I have is softened to some extent by the compassion 2 that Carla has, because of her experience within APA training, she did a masters 3 qualification at Lueven and through her reading and understanding of issues of 4 impairment through doing her PhD research. 5 6 So there is a blend and a balance within this particular team. So my expectations, 7 Carla's compassion helps us perhaps come up with a different way of perceiving the 8 ethical conundrums that confront us as ethnographers. 9 10 And in this picture, very, very basic, I don't go in for videos and film clips 11 because I don't believe they will work! So you have two researchers, the researcher 12 on the outside in the context of sitting volleyball that might be Carla, in the 13 community context it might be me, the assumption was made that I was coming along to 14 this community event. 15 16 What this is trying to show in a very simplistic sort of way, sort of cut and paste 17 old fashioned computer graphics is that we should be coming together, to be a 18 researcher and a member of the community and as a team we can straddle the line 19 between the community and the outside. 20 21 Now if the social cultural environment had been the context of volleyball, mainstream 22 volleyball I would be, based on my skills at sitting volleyball, I would be on the 23 outside, Carla would be on the inside, so that diagram depends on the cultural 24 context. 25 26 So myself as author one moves from right to left in the context of sitting volleyball 27 and vice versa in some other context. 28 29 How does this avail us to think about the ethical issues that surround doing 30 ethnographic participation? There are issues in context of informed consent, so I 31 walked away from the event in Rummage and we actually went back -- now this is where 32 I'm really, really a dodgy bloke okay, because we went back two or three weeks later 33 and I just pretended I wanted to play sitting volleyball, but we decided on the car 34 journey back home that it was worthwhile having a second dip into this ethnographic Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 51 1 moment. 2 3 So it was very convert in terms of my involvement, I didn't walk up and say that I 4 was actually the supervisor. So there are issues of informed consent and convert 5 versus overt participant observation. All of my work within Paralympic sport to date 6 has been what I would say is overt, because I'm somebody with an impairment. But 7 because I'm not being explicit that I'm actually recording and writing things down in 8 diaries and so on and so forth, it might be perceived as being covert. 9 10 And these transgressions can be manifested overtime. Diachronic is an investigation 11 that takes over a long period of time and certainly 20 years or so, or longer in 12 fact, 25 years of data collection I have on the Paralympic Games bear this out. 13 14 The issues of privacy and what the public private debate as to what gets explained to 15 whom, as a researcher Carla going to that environment will be told certain things by 16 people who know they are going to be interviewed by her. Myself as an individual, 17 who is just part of the community engaging in the fun activity of sitting volleyball, 18 other things that may be passed on to me that won't be shared in an interview. And 19 there are real dilemmas as to what gets exposed and what happened doesn't. 20 21 Any ethnographer that's worth their salt will tell you that the best data is always 22 left unpublishable, because of issues about ethics. 23 24 So problems of privacy and the distortion of evidence by community members, and 25 certainly Irving Goffman's notion of the presentation of self in everyday life in 26 these environments, we play to our audience don't we? 27 28 The issue of harm, now for social research harm is seldom physical damage, but there 29 are issues about what the truth is. Truth to one person may be an incoherent, 30 imperceptible understanding to another. The materiality of the data that we collect 31 can be harmful, and can have implications to those people under investigation. 32 33 The process of doing research, the process of finding out about a cultural 34 environment is also a process about finding out about ourselves. Since we began to Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 52 1 work together more as a team, Carla and I have found out more about ourselves than 2 perhaps we have about the sitting volleyball environment and it's really important 3 when you are putting these teams together that you share the same moral universe, so 4 if you don't get on with somebody, if you don't have the same values, there can be 5 troubles ahead. 6 7 Publication of findings is also problematic. Where to publish the material that you 8 get? How much harm will I do to the sitting volleyball community in Rummage if I 9 come and expose myself as a trained social scientist? 10 11 And what impact will that have on the people that are being cared for within these 12 contexts? The most vulnerable individuals. 13 14 So it's really, really important to situate this, the idea of this exploitation in 15 the context, and working as a team you can bat the debates back and forth, is 16 exposing this bit of information about sitting volleyball, in the development 17 context, going to lead to somebody's exploitation? And I'm just doing myself, I have 18 only got my set of opinions and my world view to draw upon, working as a team we can 19 think about it in other ways. 20 21 Issues related to the empowerment and disempowerment of individuals is always 22 problematic and one of the problems that APA has, and I was talking to Martin about 23 this outside this morning, was that I do see a lot of -- a lot more people with 24 impairments around this conference and it's a good thing to see, but I hadn't, 25 perhaps it's the selection I have made in my presentations, but I haven't seen that 26 many people presenting their findings, and so we need to get more people engaged in 27 the social cultural process of exploring the world surrounding various aspects of 28 APA. 29 30 So consequences of doing this sort of team work for the future. Negative reactions 31 to the research may be different than inappropriate ethical issues, so have we acted 32 in an ethically appropriate way? People may not sometimes like what we say about the 33 research, but bearing in mind that the average journal articles are only read by 11 34 and a half people, if you are going into some print context that's not going to Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 53 1 expose you to the world. 2 3 Gatekeepers, the people in the environment, people that Carla arranged to do the 4 interview with, we could upset them and disappoint them when they realise that the 5 guy that's a crap volleyball player actually knows something about doing social 6 research and was taking notes all the time. 7 8 We believe, this is the final point, that the mutual surveillance of an ethnographic 9 team might be a positive way forward and the balancing of the experience of 10 impairment on that team will be relatively useful. Thank you very much. 11 12 CHAIR: Okay, thank you David some interesting challenges for us as a group. So 13 we'll welcome any questions. 14 15 Q. DR KUDLACEK: Hello David, I have a question, can you share with us, because it's a 16 project on-going I guess, or data was collected, did you run into some tricky part 17 that would, could be identified as troublesome, is this ethical or unethical? Or 18 something real -- if you ran into decision-making, what should be in or left out? 19 MR HOWE: We haven't run into any problems as yet, but the ethnographic vignette, 20 going to Rummage and being part of that community and the slightly dubious return 21 without saying anything raises these issues. 22 23 Now we had the debate as to whether, when we went back Carla should just go in and do 24 the interviews and we should leave the, my attendance of the sitting volleyball 25 practice as part of it and just -- it's the tensions that we need to, Donna 26 highlighted this yesterday very well I think, we need to, within APA circles, within 27 all sort of social environments, we need to pause to reflect on what we're doing and 28 how it impacts on our research, whether you're a scientist, whether you're an APA 29 practitioner, whether you are a social researcher, you need to take that moment and 30 reflect on what you're doing. By doing it in tandem with Carla, she was able to 31 highlight things that I wouldn't have thought of, and vice versa, so that's why we 32 think it's mutually beneficial. 33 34 But as yet we don't think we have done anything wrong, but that may come to pass in Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 54 1 the future. It's about that debate. 2 3 Q. I can shout I think! I don't know if I can articulate this very well, but as an 4 outsider I'm always seeking legitimisation by bringing a person with an impairment 5 close to me, I don't know if that's just my insecurity, so working in teams. 6 7 So I'm wondering, as a dodgy dude, whether you are doing that in reverse? So you're 8 looking for legitimisation by having less of a hard assed perspective? 9 MR HOWE: I see what you're saying, I'm not advocating that this be forced okay. 10 11 I have had PhD students in the past that I would not have engaged in this type of 12 approach with. 13 14 It's about individual chemistry and being able to understand the values that somebody 15 would bring to the research and whether it's dovetailing in a nice way. I'm not -- 16 you know, I'm still tilting at windmills, I'm still -- in other contexts. 17 18 But it's about, it's also about saying that hey you can only hit people over the head 19 so hard before they stop listening. And it's about, something that happened in a 20 very organic sort of way, it's not something that, as soon as Carla arrived we said 21 okay we're going to adopt this approach and we're good to go, it was something that 22 developed as our friend ship and the supervisory relationship developed. 23 24 So I'm not saying that everyone should go buddy up with somebody and find the nearest 25 person in a wheelchair and make them your research partner, I'm saying if you come 26 across somebody that you get on with and think that they are a good egg, and it 27 doesn't necessarily have to be somebody with an impairment, but it has to be somebody 28 that you've got enough in common with to form a team like relationship. Does that 29 make sense? 30 SPEAKER: Yeah that helps, thanks David. 31 32 CHAIR: Thank you very much David. 33 34 End of Presentation Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 55 1 2 MR FLANAGAN: Ladies and gentlemen, just to continue -- you can continue eating your 3 food but we've chock-a-block session in the afternoon, but we'd like to use the lunch 4 time, while you're relaxing, in between sessions to make some awards which are -- 5 it's the first time these awards have been presented in Ireland, the CARA Centre, as 6 you know, has a brief to encourage groups and organisations around Ireland to 7 increase their ability to cater for people with disabilities. 8 9 With that we apply for some funding from the Department of Justice, linked with the 10 Minister who opened the conference on Sunday morning, Kathleen Lynch, and they 11 granted us a significant amount of money to reward organisations and services who are 12 making significant progress in their attempts to include people with disabilities. 13 14 So it's a long title for the awards but these are the CARA Adapted Physical Activity 15 Centre National Inclusion APA Awards. 16 17 And it will be annual from this year on, and they will be supported by the Department 18 of Justice. 19 20 We opened it on the website for organisations to apply and we had some excellent 21 applications in four categories, leisure centres, local sports partnerships, 22 disability services and national governing bodies of sport. 23 24 Following from a lot of our presentations, particularly key notes, were mentioning 25 you have to broaden the area which you influence and we want to broaden the area 26 which CARA reaches and that increases access with people with disabilities. 27 28 So we have the first one, the Xcessible Leisure Centre Award to be presented by 29 Catherine Harty, a director of ILAM, Irish Leisure and Amenity Managers and the award 30 winner was the Leisure World Leisure Centre in Cork, this leisure centre ticked all 31 the boxes in relation to our assessment criteria and the judges' criteria. 32 33 That was based on Pat's five Ps, that's me! Of policy, programme, physical access, 34 personnel trained to be able to deal with people with disabilities and to promote Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 56 1 that they were interested and open and their doors were open for people with 2 disabilities and accessible and looking forward and willing to be inclusive. 3 4 So the winner is, the recipient is Aylene Moloney from the Leisure World Leisure 5 Centre in Cork. 6 7 (applause) 8 9 MR FLANAGAN: Our second award for national inclusion is from the national governing 10 body sector. 11 12 To be honest, in this country I think in many countries, Australia may be a 13 significant exception, national governing bodies have been challenged in their 14 ability to cater for people with disabilities in the mainstream clubs and sports, and 15 we are working hard with some of the organisations here and undertaking some research 16 soon to encourage national governing bodies in Ireland, so one organisation in 17 Ireland has stood out for a number of years. 18 19 This award will be presented by Nikki Hamill of the Irish Wheelchair Association 20 Sport, and it will go to the Football Association of Ireland, which is the FAI and 21 this has been an outstanding national governing body in relation to all things 22 inclusive for a number of years and Oisin Jordan's presentation, which many of you 23 were at, highlighted the breadth and scope of how serious the FAI are about including 24 all people with disabilities, all levels of disability, in a range of soccer or 25 football activities, both at community level, right up to international level. 26 27 I think they would be a model for any governing body in Ireland or any other country, 28 so congratulations to the FAI and Oisin Jordan. 29 30 (applause) 31 32 MR FLANAGAN: Our third award is for a group who the CARA Centre link with on a daily 33 basis and look forward to on-going work within the coming years, the Local Sports 34 Partnership Awards, of which there are 33 around the country, who are part of the Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 57 1 National Disability Inclusion Programme, some of them have sports inclusion 2 disability officers, some don't, they all do particularly good work. 3 4 The applications in this section were particularly strong, there was a lot of 5 competition, the award will be presented by our own, now famous dancer, president of 6 EUFAPA Martin Kudlacek, and there will be a reprise at 2014 of Riverdance by Martin 7 at that stage! 8 9 But the Local Sports Partnership winner for this year, for 2012, is Sligo Local 10 Sports Partnership. 11 12 The recipient is Shane Hayes and Sligo's thorough programmes and impressive future 13 plans clearly indicate how serious, similar to the FAI, they are in relation to 14 people with disabilities, they are one of the few groups who developed strategy 15 documents, done research on their ability to help people with disabilities so we'd 16 like to congratulate Sligo Sports Partnership on that. 17 18 (applause) 19 20 MR FLANAGAN: Finally, an application in the sector of Disability Service Award, 21 these will be services for people with physical, intellectual or any other type, 22 whether it be daycare services or residential services throughout the country, and 23 there is many services around the country do very, very good work and we really feel 24 this was a sector we really wanted to acknowledge and encourage for their work over 25 many years, often unnoticed and unrewarded, but significant work for people with 26 disabilities. 27 28 So the Disability Service Award will be presented by Terrence McSweeney who runs a 29 very large service Cope Foundation in Cork, and this service has been running for a 30 number of years, in physical activity and it's able to run, this programme, on an 31 absolute shoestring, but it's the enthusiasm and dedication of one person that has 32 made it hugely successful and amazingly impressive to the judges, the presentation 33 they made for the award was colourful, interesting, and it showed a great care and 34 love for the people they worked with, and for the work they did. Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 58 1 2 So to Una Flynn, congratulations from St. Christopher's Services in Longford. 3 4 (applause) 5 6 MR FLANAGAN: Just a classic example of one of the ways they have been cutting costs 7 is that the bean bags, instead of using ball bean bags they put uncooked marrowfat 8 peas in the bags and use them, they are still making their own little materials so 9 congratulations again to Una. 10 11 Thank you for your attention, I'd like to acknowledge Niamh Daffy for her work in 12 relation to coming up with the idea of these awards and organising the funding and 13 also just to mention the presentations are one-off pieces by Louis Mulcahy, organised 14 by Tomas Aylward and just to thank the CARA Centre for their work, and encouragement 15 to all the services and hopefully, we look forward to working with you in future 16 years to increase participation. Thank you very much. 17 18 SPEAKER: Sorry folks, we just want to acknowledge one group that have done Trojan 19 work over the last few days, a lot of them aren't even in the room at the moment, but 20 the volunteers that we have, we have 23 volunteers from IT Tralee, National Learning 21 Network and some people who are out working, former graduates and are back for a few 22 days, they have given up their bank holiday weekends, they were here Saturday at 2 23 o'clock, they have had to put up with a few noisy nights where they were staying with 24 the local rally, everyone would agree their politeness, courtesy and professionalism 25 was an example for any group of people. 26 27 They have been absolutely outstanding so just maybe give them a round of applause. 28 29 (applause) 30 31 Juan Tortosa Martinez: An experience of service learning in recreation and physical 32 activity for mental health. 33 34 CHAIR: Okay everybody welcome back, we have two presentations now, the first one is Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 59 1 by Juan Tortosa Martinez, I'm not sure if you use Martinez, sometimes? From 2 University of Alicante in Spain, Juan's presentation is about the benefits of a group 3 based physical activity and recreation programme for people with severe chronic 4 mental health problems. 5 6 And then Aija will follow on from that and I'll introduce her topic when we get to 7 that. So we may have time for questions, you might want to consider your questions 8 as Juan is speaking, jot them down and if we get an opportunity for questions and 9 answers at the end we can raise them then. Thank you. 10 11 MR TORTOSA: Does this work? I don't use a mic, I'm a teacher, a lecturer I'm not 12 used to be just standing or sitting, I don't like that. 13 14 First thank you very much for being here, we just had lunch and it's easy right now, 15 it's the end of the programme and we are a little bit diary everybody, especially if 16 you went dancing last night like I did! I hope I'm not that tired. 17 18 I'm going to present to you of course a team effort, I'm here to present but there 19 are more people involved here other than the people, the names in there, myself and 20 two other colleagues one from the University of Alicante from one the University of 21 Valencia. 22 23 I'll present to you today just an experience, not research, but I will mention a 24 couple of research that we still don't have the data analysis, but if you're 25 interested I can talk about it to you later on. 26 27 We're going to talk very briefly about mental health problems, we'll discuss what can 28 physical activity and recreation do for these people, and we'll explain the programme 29 and some of the conclusions that we can try and establish out of this programme. 30 31 So people with mental health problems face many difficulties. Here we are not 32 talking about mild depression, we're talking about chronic people with severe mental 33 health, so we're talking about people with schizophrenia, people with bipolar 34 disorder, major depression, and in this case in this programme we're talking about in Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 60 1 patients. 2 3 So there is another step in this programme, an excellent professional when we started 4 the programme he used to tell me Juan you are dealing here with the championship of 5 mental health! These people are the ones more challenging to work with but the ones 6 that will be more grateful to your work too, because people that are in patient, they 7 really appreciate somebody going to work with them and care about them, and that's 8 something that makes your work much easier. 9 10 So at the beginning it seems that it will be more difficult, but in my opinion it's 11 more easy. Because when somebody really appreciates your work, he makes your work a 12 lot more easy. 13 14 Some of the things they say is positive and negative symptoms, those not familiar, 15 positive is not really a good thing in this case, positive symptoms are related to 16 hallucinations, delusions and things like that. Negative symptoms more related to 17 the part of depression, lack of motivation, that's a big issue, especially for any 18 programme that you want to run. These people are hard to motivate to get into 19 physical activity programmes, and very hard to maintain them in the programmes. 20 Adherence is a key issue for this population. 21 22 Especially in Spain, I don't know what the situation is in other countries but I'm 23 guessing it's not going to be that different, this population is very much excluded, 24 very much. And there is a big lack of knowledge what is mental health, that's what 25 we found in this programme and it's one of the main conclusion that is people really 26 don't know what this is and they are afraid of them. 27 28 People are afraid of somebody with a mental problem. 29 30 Medication side effects, Dr Carlos if you went to his presentation, excellent 31 presentation, he talked about effectiveness of medication and the issues that it 32 raises, the medication that currently take people with schizophrenia and bipolar 33 disorder, it's been effectively in some ways -- effective in some ways but not in 34 others, but there definitely is side effects, pretty severe. Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 61 1 2 They got motor effects, they are going to slow down their movements and their 3 coordination and they are going to have, which is very important, and that's part of 4 what we have been doing recently in research programmes, is that it increases their 5 cardiovascular risk. 6 7 These people are in high cardiovascular risk because of many things, but one of them 8 is medication. Medication increases their risk of cardiovascular diseases, we've 9 been studying about the balance between what is the pacemaker of the heart, it was 10 the balance between the sympathetic nervous system and the para sympathetic nervous 11 system and these people have, because of their disease already, they have got an 12 imbalance in that system with higher activation of the sympathetic nervous system and 13 low activity on the para sympathetic nervous system, which is going to have a big 14 effect on the cardiovascular risk. 15 16 Other than that obesity and diabetes is very common in this population. This problem 17 is due to different things, medication is part of it, they got very low -- low levels 18 of physical activity, usually not very good eating habits, and they smoke a lot. 19 This population are heavy smokers in a group percentage. 20 21 And actually there is some research saying that maybe they smoke a lot because it 22 helps them with side effects of the medication, but I'm not that sure about that. 23 24 Everything that I am saying, it turns out to be they have a reduced life expectancy 25 of about 20 years compared to the general population. They live 20 years less than 26 the rest of the population, and because of cardiovascular risk factors and because of 27 suicide too, and other things, but most of the things we can try to have an impact on 28 them and definitely on cardiovascular risk factors, physical activity should be 29 helpful for them. 30 31 And I don't know in other countries again, but in Spain our system is not having 32 physical activity programmes, and definitely not with people that are knowledgeable 33 about physical activity with this population. 34 Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 62 1 So with physical activity, we improve physical health, we can lose weight, we can 2 improve our diabetes, our cardiovascular risk. It's been proved that physical 3 activity has a positive impact on depression and mood and with our programme this has 4 not been proved yet, but it does probably have a good effect, a positive effect on 5 the way they socialised and in their self esteem in many ways, and other 6 presentations talked about the fact that if you are able to do something it will stop 7 your self esteem and that is, I believe in that too. 8 9 And it's also about the way you treat them. It's very important the way you are 10 going to treat these people, to build up their self esteem. They need to be, to feel 11 part of a programme in a way that they have a voice in this programme. It's not that 12 you just get there and say everything that has to be done, as I explain a bit later, 13 we give these people the role and the possibility of even designing games and they 14 supervise in the games and implement in the games, which we have found very 15 interesting experience, and I think pretty positive. 16 17 So the programme we called it something like playing as an intervention tool for 18 people with mental health problems. In this programme, it's kind of based on what 19 surface learning is, it's kind of like a little bit -- it's not exactly surface 20 learning, we are actually bringing to the setting, it's done in psychiatric 21 institution, public psychiatric institution in Alicante and we are bringing the 22 programme, it's not that the students go to interact, we do bring the programme, we 23 started the programme, me and the other Professor, lecturer from the university of 24 Alicante, but we bring the students of the university of Alicante and they 25 participate, the users of that institution as equals, there are no distinctions 26 there. 27 28 What were the objectives of this programme? We wanted the students to have, to learn 29 about the benefits that could have physical activity and recreation programme for 30 this population and our students were diverse in terms of their training. We could 31 have people from social work, we could have people from nursing, we could have people 32 from physical activity, but I think this is important too. 33 34 One of the problems we have in Spain is that we're not convincing people from Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 63 1 physical activity, we are not convincing people from other settings, from medical 2 settings, from nursing and social work, that our work is important, and that we need 3 in these settings, a professional from the physical activity and sports science 4 field. So it's a good opportunity if they got hand on experience on what the 5 benefits of these programmes can have. I think it will change their mind, and if 6 they, in the future work in these settings they are going to be more open to have 7 somebody with this specific training. 8 9 We wanted too, that they learned about people with mental health problems, from a 10 different perspective, not what they see in a book, it's what you feel, what you talk 11 to these people, they are going to be playing together, they are going to hold hands, 12 they are going to give each other hug, that learning experience of how people with 13 mental health problem is, is very different to whatever you can teach in a class. 14 It's just completely different. 15 16 This way we were hoping that these initial fears that students have about mental 17 health were overcome, and try and increase the motivation for, trying to work with 18 this population in the future, which is very related to the stereotypes and prejudice 19 that they have. If they can overcome that, they can see that that's a population 20 that can be worth working with. 21 22 For the users, we thought it was a good opportunity for being more active, they did 23 not offer programmes like this one in the institution, what they did after the 24 programme, we have been running for a couple of years now, with -- we have some 25 little bit of achievement in terms of, they are already including in the programme a 26 physical activity programme. We haven't achieved yet that they hire one of our 27 students or somebody, a professional yet, but I have been personally training the 28 people in the centre to run the programmes, it's not the ideal situation, but still 29 much, much better to what they had been, where they had nothing. 30 31 So the social interactions and social skills development and we were hoping for a 32 little social inclusion too, I think the way we develop and design activities has a 33 lot to do with this, we didn't want -- I worked for before working for the 34 university, I was working for rehabilitation centre, a private centre with a lot of Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 64 1 people with mental health problems but acute phase that they would go, like maybe one 2 or two weeks, three months whatever, depending on how big the problem was or not. 3 4 We did physical activity programmes more fitness based individualised, so I would do 5 a specific programme for them and with following the principles of training and all 6 that, and it was very individual, and we felt that maybe a group based activity would 7 have some of the benefits that do not have, having somebody on a treadmill or 8 somebody on a stationery bike or doing some weight lifting, which it was good, it did 9 work, but we were missing something, and these people have very low social skills, 10 and a lot of problems interacting with society, they have lost jobs because of that 11 and again this has a big impact on their self esteem. 12 13 So we wanted to give these people an opportunity for improving their self esteem, to 14 be, that they could interact with people outside the institution and that these 15 people were going to treat them as equals, they would not treat them as ill people, 16 just treat them as people and we were hoping that that could have an impact on self 17 esteem and plus what I said before, if they were able to have a voice on their 18 programme, and they were able to design some games and implement some games, that 19 would have a positive effect. 20 21 For example, we had one of the users that maybe we were running the programme for 22 four weeks or something like that, and we started, at the beginning we started more 23 with directing, conducting the sessions myself or my colleague, and when we were like 24 a month or so of the programme, that it was running, we started empowering this user 25 for doing some games, and also to the students, and one of the users came up and said 26 well I know a game, and she explained a game and it was very successful game. I mean 27 everybody loved it, we loved it! And we have been using it. 28 29 After the game was over, another user came to her and gave her a kiss and said I love 30 your game. And that was very powerful. If you look into the face of this woman when 31 somebody came to her and said I love your game, that was something we thought that 32 was really meaningful. 33 34 Service learning methodology, we would do twice a week for three months the Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 65 1 programme, it ran for three months, one hour per session, including physical activity 2 or recreation, it could be warm up, main session and cool down phase. 3 4 We were basing motor games and social games a lot of interaction and lot of physical 5 contact. Again when I start this had programme I talk to some of the psychologists 6 at the centre and they told me what is your idea of the programme? And we were 7 explaining the programme and I said my idea is that they interact, I want a lot of 8 physical contact, I think that would be very good for both, and she told me, I don't 9 think you're going to be able to do that. These people do not like physical contact. 10 These people are going to be afraid of physical contact, and I was like I don't know, 11 we'll try -- after a month their favourite game was the hug game, it was the simplest 12 game you can play, you are on a circle, and you got somebody on your right side and 13 you say something like -- this is a hug and you hug them and then the person there 14 says a what? And then you say again, a hug and you hug him again. Then he passes it 15 on. That was the favourite game for them. And they told us -- we need this, we need 16 signs of appreciation, we need love, we need somebody who really cares about us. 17 18 So the psychologists were not right. And I say this because part of the problem is 19 that we set low expectations for these people, we think they are not going to do 20 things that they can do. And that's part of the problem I think. 21 22 We were trying to develop this skills and confidence for designing and implementing 23 their own games as I mentioned, the students did a great job, even if they were not 24 from a physical activity context, they loved it and they were very much into the 25 programme. 26 27 A little bit of the methodology for the sessions we really wanted every activity to 28 be a success and when I mean a success, a success for the users, they need to be able 29 to do every single activity without failing. People with low self esteem, if you put 30 them too difficult a task and they fail, that's going to have a negative impact on 31 their self esteem. Another example, we were playing jumping rope, which was actually 32 again a user's choice, we didn't think about jumping rope as an activity to be 33 honest, and a user said I love jumping rope, when I was a kid I used to jump rope, we 34 started jumping rope and they loved it, they all loved it. We were very surprised Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 66 1 about that. 2 3 But one of them, she was not very skillful and she missed one of them, she was 4 jumping and she missed it and she started crying, so we adapted the activity so it 5 was easier for them, so we didn't do the full swing, and then she could do it and she 6 was happy again, so we need to make sure that we don't do tasks that are too 7 difficult. But we need to not set low expectations either, so there is a balance 8 there of trying to do things that they can achieve, but trying not to set low 9 expectations, we need to try to push a little the limits to see how far they can go. 10 11 Variety of activities, we found over the time we do think about this, that this is 12 the way to go, they get bored pretty easy about activities, so if you repeat 13 activities a lot they quit. So you need to have a lot of different things and the 14 last programme we would do every day for example, we would do Monday one thing, 15 Wednesday one thing and Friday a different thing, and then repeat maybe over the 16 weeks, but not repeat Monday, Wednesday and Friday the same activity. 17 18 Simple instructions with visual demonstrations, that was one of the big rules, do not 19 -- the explanation cannot be longer than the game and the students sometimes said 20 that, we're trying to fix that. 21 22 Just start playing the game with the basics and then if we need to clarify something 23 then we'll do it. 24 25 Social interaction and team building as a central component of the programme and the 26 activity participation on terms of designing and implementing the games. 27 28 This is actually on another setting, but the pictures I had for the programme that 29 really is -- this is with the same idea but in the university setting, we didn't have 30 pictures of that programme, we didn't have permission at the time of having pictures 31 and we do now, because we have built confidence with the centre because they like our 32 programmes very much, but at first it was kind of hard for those things. 33 34 This is jumping rope now. Balloons were something that were very successful too, Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 67 1 they love balloons and we play many games with balloons, it's something that we do 2 over and over. 3 4 Parachute, that's another thing we've noticed, they love new material, it's appealing 5 to them, if you bring a big ball, you bring the parachutes, that's something that 6 motivates them a lot, new stuff, something new. 7 8 We think that the outcomes, they really appreciate the value of physical activity, 9 the students did, they increased their knowledge and awareness about what mental 10 health problems are. And they said to us that they have changed drastically their 11 perception about what a mental health problem is. 12 13 They start to see the person, just treat them like another person and not thinking 14 he's got schizophrenia and he can be aggressive or anything like that. And they did 15 improve their confidence and skills on working with this population. 16 17 For the users they did have fun, they enjoyed it, so I think just with that, that 18 would be a success, that will be good enough, we did increase their physical activity 19 time which is also a good thing. We did give them, and that was important, an 20 opportunity for relating to people outside the centre, with in patients I think this 21 is very important, and some of those on patients are going to try to come back and be 22 outpatients and come back into society, opportunities to relate to people outside the 23 institutions are good for them. And we do think they improved their self esteem, I 24 can't prove but that's our perception of what the programme was. 25 26 So we think the programme was highly beneficial for both students and users and we do 27 think that more programmes like this should be implemented with a partnership of 28 university or whatever institutions or within the institution itself. Thank you very 29 much. 30 31 CHAIR: Thank you Juan, that was very insightful presentation and of a very unique 32 programme I think on terms of it's design and beneficial for both the people with 33 mental health problems and the other students, so it's hugely beneficial. 34 Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 68 1 I would be involved with the GP exercise referral programme on Ireland some of the 2 examples and issues you presented there on relation to moving away from standardised 3 fitness activity more to games and social activities is a very interesting concept. 4 5 Now would anyone from the floor like to ask questions now from Juan or alternatively 6 we can go on to our second presentation and have questions for the two at the end? 7 No. Okay maybe we'll ask questions, if you have a question for Juan we'll ask it now 8 so. 9 10 Q. Thank you for the presentation it was really interesting, related to my next 11 presentation. How do you prepare students meeting clients and what is your 12 preparation and what do you tell them, medical point of view or from social point of 13 view? 14 15 MR TORTOSA: What we do, we structure a programme where before starting, going to 16 institution we have a few classroom sessions where we tell them what we're going to 17 do, how we're going to do it, we teach them a little bit about the methodology we're 18 going to use, and what the population looks like that we want to work with, some of 19 the basics of what mental health is, and what is schizophrenia, what is bipolar 20 disorder, the basics really, not very in depth information, just the basics so they 21 are not -- we decreased a little bit the lack of information so they don't know what 22 they are going to do. 23 24 And we also go one day before starting a programme to visit the institution, so they 25 get familiar with the setting, they know where we are going to be meeting during the 26 programme and we have a person responsible at the centre, there is a nurse, as I said 27 excellent professional, that talks a little bit about them and that's about it. 28 29 I don't think we need anything else, because the things started to happen when they 30 start to interact with each other. And you don't really need -- we have another 31 programme that we don't talk to them and they just go on there and play, you don't 32 need information to start playing, but... 33 34 CHAIR: Any further questions for Juan? No okay. We'll get set up for the next Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 69 1 presentation. 2 3 End of Presentation 4 5 MR O'FLYNN: Good afternoon everyone, hello there, welcome back. We have a little 6 bit of time pressure, so I'm going to go straight ahead. 7 8 We're certainly on the home stretch, we still have a couple of surprises left for you 9 this afternoon! 10 11 Our next speaker is quite literally Ireland's Mr Sport! In his capacity as CEO of the 12 Irish Sports Council, John Treacy masterminded this country's move towards a 21st 13 century system, improving both participation and elite performance. 14 15 As a double world cross country champion and an Olympic silver medalist, you'd expect 16 him to champion the needs of top athletes, and he does that. But he also displays a 17 genuine and continuing commitment to participation and inclusion, supporting projects 18 both by word, deed and much needed money. 19 20 The ISC for example has pumped more than 1 million euro into the sports inclusion 21 disability programme since 2010. 22 23 He is here today to relaunch and recommit that programme, ladies and gentlemen, John 24 Treacy. 25 26 MR TREACY: Thank you very much Niall, it's a pleasure it to be here, I'll definitely 27 keep that fella on to do my PR work on future. 28 29 It's a pleasure to be here with you all as I said, I want to welcome all the people 30 that travelled from overseas to this important conference. 31 32 We in the Sports Council are always highlighting the needs for people to participate 33 in exercise and physical activity, and more so and more importantly, people with 34 disabilities to participate in sport, and we don't want anyone to be left behind in Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 70 1 the wave of enthusiasm for physical activity that we are actually seeing in Ireland 2 as we speak. 3 4 The recession has been good for us in terms of people exercising and getting out and 5 having a bit more free time to exercise and our numbers are very good and we'll be 6 publishing numbers in June which are showing an increase, a substantial increase in 7 physical activity, right around the Republic of Ireland in terms of physical 8 activity, so I just want to say that is a very, very important from the Sports 9 Council perspective. 10 11 On the high performance side as well, we have a very strong Paralympic team going to 12 the Paralympic Games and the Olympic team of course as well, and we'll be investing 13 substantially in the Paralympic athletes, they get the same level of funding as the 14 able bodied athletes, they are very well funded, well supported, our Paralympic 15 athletes are going out to Portugal as training camp before the Olympic games and 16 we'll be very well geared towards performing at the optimal in London, so we're 17 looking forward to that. 18 19 But more importantly and it really is more importantly, we really do talk about 20 physical activity for people with disability and making sure that they are 21 participating because we all know it's good for their health and well-being. 22 23 We know as well that sport would have passed a lot of people by in the past that had 24 a disability, and they didn't feel welcomed and didn't feel, or have the confidence 25 to participate and I know that the sports inclusion development officers right around 26 the country, we have 16 of them operating right around the country, have opened the 27 doors for participation for a lot of people, that weren't accessing physical activity 28 at all. 29 30 And the innovative programmes that they have developed are second to none and I 31 suppose leagues and what have you, opportunity force people to participate against 32 each other, so that's very welcome. 33 34 The Sports Council, in times that are very tough and our funding has dropped 20% over Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 71 1 the last four years, have maintained the programme and what I'm here to do is to tell 2 you all that we are relaunching programme and will continue to invest in the 3 programme and we are putting 400,000 into the programme for this year top ensure that 4 we employ 16 people through the local sports partnerships right around the country to 5 work with people with disabilities, so that's a particular important piece. 6 7 What we are doing then is obviously those sports inclusion development officers will 8 work on sometimes maybe sharing different counties or working on a regional basis so 9 that's a little different and for some local sports partnerships that don't have a 10 disability officer we'll be providing support and funding around those as well, so 11 around funding programmes in those local areas. 12 13 So from a Sports Council perspective in these harsh economic times we are continuing 14 to invest in this programme. And I suppose this programme really has been driven a 15 lot by the Sports Council itself and my staff in the Sports Council and people like 16 Ciara Smith and Fiona Coyne and all the LSPs around the country have driven this 17 programme, but very much supported by Tralee IT, and I want to highlight the work of 18 Pat and Niamh for their outstanding work in the CARA Centre. 19 20 They have moulded and trained our sports inclusion development officers and they have 21 done a fantastic job in getting that awareness out and I want to highlight and thank 22 Tralee IT for their support around the CARA Centre. And I believe Pat got an award 23 last night from you all, I hear Peter Smyth was up here bestowing the virtues of Pat, 24 he even said Pat told me he said nice things about him, so that's a bit of a 25 surprise! But there you go ... 26 27 But again, Pat has a major challenge ahead of him this year, as well as continuing 28 the work of the CARA Centre, he is now a coach to the Waterford hurling team, which 29 is my county, so I'm not raising any great expectations in terms of Pat, but we want 30 an All-Ireland in the next three years that's all we need Pat, so there is more 31 expectations on top of you. 32 33 But what you always do is you keep a busy man in a job and you continue to hike more 34 work on him because busy people get things done. So to Niamh and Pat, I want to say Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 72 1 another outstanding job for everyone in the CARA Centre. 2 3 That's about it from me, we are basically here to say listen we'll continue to invest 4 in this programme, the results we get on the ground and we hear them, I hear them 5 myself from people with disabilities, and basically sport passing them by, we don't 6 want that to happen, we want people to be engaged and we want everyone to enjoy sport 7 and get the benefits that all of us have got through our involvement in sport and 8 that sport is very much for everyone. 9 10 Thank you very much. 11 12 MR O'FLYNN: Thank you very much John Treacy for that very good news. 13 14 This year's congress is drawing to a close, oh ... you can do better than that! This 15 year's congress is drawing to a close ... and it's nearly time to pass the mantle to 16 Turkey for ISAPA 2013 and Spain for EUCAPA 2014, to tell us a little about those 17 important events can I call to the rostrum please Javier Perez the chair of EUCAPA 18 2014 in Madrid and to speak first Dilara Hocaya from ISAPA 2013. 19 20 MS HOCAYA: First of all I would like to thank Pat and the organising committee for 21 this excellent congress, so I would like to present a small gift to Pat in memory of 22 today. 23 24 (Subtitled video playing) 25 26 MR O'FLYNN: Thank you very much Dilara, Javier, will you take the stand? 27 28 MR PEREZ: Thank you very much for being here, thank you to the organisation of 29 EUCAPA 2012 for allowing us to present this conference in two years in Madrid in 30 Spain, where a couple of friends are coming to present, but I really want to say a 31 big, big thank you to, first to EUFAPA to the European Federation of Adapted Physical 32 Activity to select the application from our university the Polytechnic University of 33 Madrid to host the next conference in 2014 and I want to thank you too, EUCAPA 2012 34 of course, Pat and his team, and EUCAPA 2010, Finland, Tony is there -- because your Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 73 1 experience and your knowledge will help us a lot to make the best conference 2 possible. 3 4 The theme that we want to make as framework of the conference is similar to the one 5 we are here, but we want to put a little bit of the accent on application from 6 research, but really in inclusion into action, applications from research. 7 8 We want to offer a unique opportunity for you, for sport scientists, professionals, 9 Professors, to share and come together and be inspired by the new developments in APA 10 and disability sport. And of course to be the best forum possible to promote 11 fruitful and long standing co-operation between professional experts in Europe and 12 worldwide. 13 14 We have this triangle for organisers the congress will organise by the faculty of 15 sports science in the Polytechnic University of Madrid and together with foundation 16 Sanitas, one of the best supporters we launched three years ago CEDE, the centre for 17 inclusive sports studies, located in the same faculty, which I am honoured to direct, 18 and this is the organisation that will organise the congress. 19 20 You have some fliers, you have our website and you can already check the different 21 dates that you have to keep in mind, for example you will need to send your abstracts 22 if you want to participate, around February of 2014, and hopefully of course we'll 23 see you in ISAPA in Turkey in Istanbul this year, we'll ask them to have five minutes 24 maybe to present the conference next year, so these are the important dates, and the 25 congress will be run in the third week of October 2014. 26 27 Just to give you an idea of what is our main aim, to promote quality and healthy 28 physical activity and sport for people with disabilities through concrete inclusive 29 action from scientific, academic and educational fields. 30 31 Our centre deals with four main areas of action, one is research, training and 32 formation, real activities of implementation, of inclusive sports situation, and the 33 diffusion of the knowledge and publication, so for us EUCAPA 2014 will be our best 34 training opportunity as a conference, as a European conference. Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 74 1 2 Here you can see this is one of the activities that we run with one of our partners, 3 it's Foundation Real Madrid, we have inclusive basketball camp already this year for 4 the fourth time, and we are really proud to collaborate and these are our partners in 5 the promotion of the conference, we have the Ministry of sport, we have City Hall of 6 Madrid, we have our national Paralympic committee, the regional TV of Madrid and Real 7 Madrid foundation. 8 9 And we have other partners at institutional level, academic level, other universities 10 partnerships in the region of Madrid and the disability sport federation who really 11 engaged with our application. 12 13 The philosophy we want to transfer as EUCAPA, yesterday we were discussing in the 14 EUFAPA board, like here in Killarney we want to share practice with theory, but in 15 the real practice, and that's why we tried to ask real sport men and women with and 16 without disability, what's the best practice possible, like we did three years ago 17 with Oscar Pistoris in our first inclusive week, sometimes we are talking about 18 inclusion and as we said in the conference many times, let's let them talk, let the 19 main act or make them talk. 20 21 And of course the practicals, which I think in this kind of congress are really, 22 really important. 23 24 So why to go to EUCAPA 2014, I don't have such a nice video, I have a little video, 25 Pat Flanagan's main motivation to go, is Pat around? He is not here, Real Madrid -- 26 he is out? Okay tell him Real Madrid won the league this year, but I am not a soccer 27 supporter so you can have another option, bull fighting if you want, but these two 28 things I have to say it's really in the culture of Spain, you will of course have the 29 opportunity to enjoy. But apart from that, Madrid is a region and a city, almost 7 30 million inhabitants, in the city itself 4 million, we have such a monumental city, we 31 have a really nice year, much of the time, maybe you know Tapas? You can enjoy 32 Tapas, real Tapas in Madrid, so you are welcome to taste it. 33 34 Just to remind you, the city of Madrid has been three times in the role to organise Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 75 1 Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2012, 2016 we were in the final with Rio and Rio won 2 and now we are again preparing our bid for Olympics and Paralympics in 2020, so as 3 you can imagine the city is really prepared to host important sport events and 4 important scientific events like EUCAPA 2014. 5 6 You have already a website where you can see the basic information, you have an 7 e-mail address and just to give you a piece a little piece of our inspiration. 8 9 (Video playing) 10 11 The last word is that I would like you to encourage all the people that's here, your 12 faculties, your country, your universities, to be present at the conference, to 13 encourage students, I know the EUDAPA students are here around, I suggest you to work 14 hard these two years and present your brilliant work in Madrid, and I hope to see you 15 in Madrid. Thank you very much. 16 17 MR O'FLYNN: Thank you Javier we look forward to Madrid and Istanbul. 18 19 Over the past three days we have seen an astonishing array of the international 20 experts from UK, USA, Canada and Europe, it's a testament to the commitment of all of 21 you that we have heard here from 33 countries. 22 23 We welcome now however one of our own, Una Moynihan a colleague of mine in the CARA 24 Centre steering group works right here in Kerry with our host institution, the 25 Institute of Technology Tralee. Teaching in the health and leisure department, Una's 26 core interest is in investigating the scope of organisations to optimise the quality 27 of the sporting experience for the widest possible number of people, particularly 28 young people. 29 30 I'm proud to introduce my colleague, Una Moynihan MA. 31 32 Una Moynihan: Appreciative Physical Activity. 33 34 MS MOYNIHAN: A moment while I literally find myself! Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 76 1 2 First of all I'd sincerely like to thank the organisers of the conference for 3 inviting me here today, it's a truly humbling experience to get the opportunity to 4 speak to such an international and such a learned audience, so speaking of the 5 organisers of the conference I had three different chats with them when they 6 initially invited me, asking what their expectations of me are? Or would be? 7 8 They gave me a list of things that essentially constituted about 100 hours of lecture 9 content that I would have covered with them when they were students, so you will be 10 glad to hear I have tailored their expectations and condensed it somewhat! 11 12 I suppose it's fair to say that Adapted Physical Activity isn't a brand new area of 13 sport or physical activity, it has been around for some time. While I suppose sports 14 development is my area and that's a very future focused area, we generally need toe 15 look back and acknowledge and appreciate the past before we can understand where we 16 need to go in the future. 17 18 So I suppose it's worth mentioning the fact that activities like wheelchair 19 basketball which was presented to us here this morning, that's an activity that has 20 its origins back in the 1940s, Paralympic sport in Ireland dates back to 1960, so we 21 are over 50 years involved in Paralympic sport. The Special Olympics in Ireland has 22 its origins in the 1970s, so there is a very rich history and rich tradition that 23 will help inform us as we look to the future. 24 25 I suppose the story so far, the main point here is etcetera, etcetera, etcetera -- 26 the list could have gone on, but there have been a number of developments in sport in 27 Ireland that are certainly indicators of an awareness and appreciation of the need 28 for change and advancement so as to make sport a much, much more inclusive space. 29 30 I have just enumerated some of those, the expansion of the Special Olympics and I 31 know that last night Peter mentioned that 2003 was a seminal year, that's not to 32 ignore what went before, but it certainly was, we hosted the world games, there was 33 activity in the whole area of disability sports that we had never seen before, and 34 then we had the humble origins of a national Adapted Physical Activity conference Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 77 1 that I suppose has borne fruit here today as well. 2 3 So I suppose really what we're about is now in 2012 trying to successfully build on 4 the solid foundations that have been laid by those who have gone before. 5 6 Adapted Physical Activity is a growing area of Irish sports policy, it's also worth 7 saying, this is something I will come back to in the end, sports policy is a subset 8 of social policy, that's something we need to bear in mind, there is a whole other 9 world outside of us there, that we need to connect to, as I understand James Rimmer 10 had picked up on that point already, so I don't want to repeat the point. 11 12 Anything that's growing presents challenges, and Kotter identified a number of these, 13 including that sort of sense of urgency for transformation can often just be reduced 14 somewhat, some of the early wins have already been celebrated and earlier just before 15 I spoke John Treacy relaunched the Sido programme for example, no doubt about it but 16 the original launch that have was an early win, then of course when you have more 17 people come into a movement, you have a diversity of perspective that at its core is 18 very, very rich but sometimes for those who are already in that space it can create a 19 little blurring of the vision that initially motivated them. 20 21 I suppose just to give some background to the Adapted Physical Activity context in 22 Ireland, it's primarily pursued by organisations in voluntary and public sector and I 23 suppose as Hilton and Bramham have said it's largely social reformist, sports 24 development had its origins in the 60s early 70s when there was a realise that sport 25 for all was really only rhetoric, that it wasn't truth, and likewise the APA movement 26 is very much about social reformism there is a bit of a revolutionary spirit that 27 drives a lot of the work. And people who work in APA, trying to realise and deliver 28 what might be termed sporting democracy, it's about making it accessible to 29 everybody, it is really about enacting the ideal of sport for all, which again has 30 its origins in the 1960s. 31 32 I suppose the purpose of this talk, nothing modest about it, is to focus on ways of 33 optimising the collective strengths of people in the whole area of Adapted Physical 34 Activity, in order to not just simply perform but to transform, to make our Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 78 1 contribution to the transformation of broader society. 2 3 Just certainly in the last decade and a half here in Ireland there has been a huge 4 emphasis on making voluntary and public organisations more business like in their 5 operations, I sometimes facetiously wonder do they ever ask business to be more 6 sporting in their operation? But we'll leave that aside for today. 7 8 Certainly strategic planning is a very rational and objective process and there are a 9 number of steps that are undertaken and I've enumerated them there, I won't list them 10 out, I'm sure you are familiar with them and the ultimate aim is to make any 11 organisation more competitive. 12 13 Indeed it is about giving direction to action and that's certainly very laudable. 14 However, strategic planning has some people who have reservations about it and I 15 suppose Henry Mintzberg, the Canadian guru on management, he was the author of a book 16 and article in 1994 entitled the Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning, and he makes 17 the point that strategic planning encourages calculating rather than a committed 18 style of leadership. Now I'll come back to leadership before I wrap up, but 19 essentially what he says is and I'll just quote him, "Managers with a committed style 20 lead in such a way that everyone on the journey helps shape its course." 21 22 I suppose there is an emerging perspective and it's very much in sociology and also 23 in psychology, and it's very much a strengths based perspective, and what the core 24 belief is that the absence of bad stuff doesn't automatically result in good. So 25 that's essentially the strengths based perspective. 26 27 I suppose a couple of the more familiar areas where this has, that belief has started 28 to emanate would be in what's called asset based community development or positive 29 psychology, the notion that good is not the same as not good or bad, it's not a 30 direct opposite, there is something more to it. 31 32 That's where I'm going to go, so bear with me, over the next eight slides, I'll give 33 you a very brief overview of a planning model called the appreciative planning and 34 action model, another APA model. Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 79 1 2 So if you can just bear with me. It has its origins in the 1980s, and I think the 3 interesting thing about it is it emerged through the work of a PhD student David 4 Cooperider who was essentially exploring the whole area of egalitarian organisations, 5 so again there is a believe system that underpins this APA that is arguably very 6 complimentary to our own APA, and again the early trials of it were in the context of 7 community development, which again is the space arguably where sports development is 8 positioned and also APA. 9 10 And I suppose essentially what appreciative planning and action is about it's about 11 looking at what already works in an organisation. So it's about asking the question 12 what gives our organisation life? What gives our organisation momentum? Now the 13 theories that underpin it aren't new, again they have origins back in the 1960s, many 14 of you will be familiar with the self fulfilling prophesy or the labeling theory or 15 the placebo effect, earlier this morning Lauren Lieberman talked about the social 16 constructivism and what we perceive becomes our reality, so I suppose to give you a 17 really simple example and some of you may have had this experience, did you ever 18 think about buying a car, I don't know pick a car, a Ford Focus, and everywhere you 19 go, you see a Ford Focus? Well it's a little bit like that, what we attend to, what 20 we pay attention to becomes our reality. 21 22 So in the word of Whitney and Trostenbloom, this approach to personal change and 23 organisational change is based on the assumption that questions and dialogue about 24 strengths assets, values, hopes and dreams are themselves transformational. 25 26 Now in its early days appreciative planning and action wasn't a method, it was more a 27 philosophy and it was informed by four core principles, I'll just go through them 28 briefly, the first is appreciative, so you look at the positive, you focus on what is 29 working well, that's what you attend to. 30 31 The next point about it is, this is the critical thing, this isn't empty rhetoric, 32 this is about looking for evidence, it must be an evidence based approach to 33 planning. 34 Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 80 1 The other, the third principle and I have to say it's one that appeals to me, it's 2 provocative, it is encouraging risk taking in terms of thought and debate and 3 discussion. So it promotes divergent thinking in order to come up with provocative 4 propositions, what I like about it is that those who take a contrary or alternative 5 view aren't seen as incoherent cranks, but rather they are seen as people just trying 6 to promote a spirit of inquiry. 7 8 Then the last principle it has is that it's collaborative, it appreciates that no 9 man, no woman, no organisation, is an island. That we need to work together in order 10 to make the ideal vision of the world that we are trying to appreciate, a reality. 11 12 Just to give you some examples from an inclusive education context, some work was 13 done in the USA and essentially teachers, parents and young people were asked the 14 question: In order for inclusive adult education to be successful, teachers should 15 demonstrate the values of, the skills of, and the knowledge of ... 16 17 And I'm just going to go down to the third skill, I won't go through each of them, 18 but what Lauren Lieberman spoke about earlier, what Ken Black spoke about earlier was 19 differentiated learning, we all benefit from differentiated learning. 20 21 That if we can make our education inclusive, if we can make our sport inclusive, 22 we're all enriched, because we're all engaged at our own level, it's very, very 23 powerful potentially, it has major implications for how we practice, and I think 24 that's probably where a lot of our work needs to focus. 25 26 So moving on, in the early 1990s, a four stage approach, they tried to operationalise 27 it, philosophy was fine but how does it actually work on the ground? So the four D 28 model was identified and they pretty well reflect the four principles I referred to 29 earlier. 30 31 The first is discovery, identifying the successes, so what is it that's working? Now 32 in the whole area of positive psychology, Barbara Frederickson, a very, very well 33 renowned and publicised psychologist has found that we need three positive emotions 34 for every negative emotion in order to flourish, now that applies to individuals and Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 81 1 to organisations. 2 3 And in case anybody thinks that that's all very nice, but neuroscientists are able to 4 back that up now that brain scanning technology has moved on. 5 6 Dream, envision the ideal future, and then concretise those ideas. Later on I'll 7 share with you some discovery and dream aspects of this from just a personal 8 perspective and I'll leave the design and destiny up to yourselves after that. 9 10 But it's very, very much about coming up with concrete proposals, so this new state 11 or this better world becomes a reality. And critically this model is about 12 accountability. It is about results, it is about achievement and again achievement 13 was something that came up as being a very important focus in any area of human 14 activity, including sport. 15 16 Achievement doesn't mean winning, but I don't need to tell you that, because you all 17 know, sorry I have forgotten you are not my first year students! 18 19 So that brings us on, I told you I'd be back to leadership, that brings us onto the 20 whole area of leadership, back to Henry Mintzberg and Henry essentially says: "I 21 think of true leaders as engaging, they engage others with their thoughtfulness and 22 humility because they engage themselves in what they are doing and not for personal 23 gain. Such leaders bring about the energy that exists naturally within people. If 24 there is a heroic dimension to their behaviour, it is not by acting heroically, so 25 much as by enabling other people to act heroically." 26 27 Now Mintzberg is critical of what he calls heroic leadership, because he says show me 28 a leader and I'll show you followers. Really what he is talking about is this 29 involved, connected, engaged leadership, not disconnected leadership. So that notion 30 of engagement is absolutely critical. 31 32 He then goes on to talk about communityship, he has coined the term communityship. 33 He says it stands somewhere between individual initiative, we don't throw that out, 34 and also collective citizenship, where we work together. So organisations need to be Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 82 1 seen as living organisms. 2 3 My colleague Pat Flanagan has a saying that people make places. People make 4 organisations. And where we have this collective effort we are a richer 5 organisation. 6 7 Lindz and Torres have come up a model for governance in relationship in order to 8 promote appreciative planning and action, essentially it's called the Meta Model, 9 I'll take you through it briefly and this is the last of the slides on planning and 10 action, but they say there are multiple ways of knowing, so we have a male versus 11 female perspective, urban versus rural, management versus worker perspective, Irish 12 versus American, German versus Finnish and so on so forth there are many ways of 13 knowing, and we generally, we all have a default way in which we view the world, we 14 have our way, it's quite egocentric, that's how it is, that's not necessarily a bad 15 thing, every now and then we certainly try to put ourselves in the shoes of others. 16 17 But in any organisation leaders and leadership have to recognise that there is a 18 collective wisdom, several times over, Mintzberg has talked about wisdom and David 19 Cooperfield (sic) talks about wisdom, you have wisdom in organisations. 20 21 The next thing is engagement, I have already spoken about neuroscientists finding 22 that when we are engaged we are more creative, we are more resilient, we function at 23 a much, much better level, so we need to find ways to engage people. 24 25 And essentially what Lindz and Torres will say is anything goes, once it's legal, 26 ethical and benefits in the long term the stakeholders of the organisation. And that 27 notion of engagement as I say is very complimentary to Mintzberg's thoughts on 28 leadership. 29 30 Then the whole area of thinking together and again they will say promote divergent 31 thinking ahead of convergent thinking, otherwise you end up with group thinking. 32 33 So give space to the contrary view, give space to the alternative view, it's probably 34 worth hearing. Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 83 1 2 And then finally, acting together and again they talk about mutuality, accountability 3 and critically, sustainability, by acting together, that's not just within the 4 organisation, that's also acting without the organisation in a sense of linking with 5 other organisations outside of your own organisation. 6 7 So I gave a little bit of thought and I said right APA in Ireland, sorry now this is 8 an Irish centric view so bear with me, but I hope that looking at how we're doing 9 things here will give some food for thought to my international colleagues. 10 11 I suppose the one thing that struck me is there is a lot of organisational wisdom out 12 there, you know what, Powerpoint limited me, I'm not being smart there, I could have 13 had that slide jam packed, and there is no particular reason why these organisations 14 were selected. 15 16 But these are all very, very important organisations who are already doing good work. 17 Now what we need to do is find ways to get these organisations to link together more 18 effectively, and also to link outside of sport and outside of disability. 19 20 I then said I will have a little look at some of the evidence, I came across two 21 studies, Francis Hannon's work in 2005 that I know was very, very developmental in 22 terms of informing the CARA Centre, the Sido projects, so on and so forth and 23 McCarron et al, now the studies are not identical, I hold my hand up to that, they 24 are not, the 2011 is not a replication of the 2005 study. 25 26 The 2011 study is one that focuses on people with intellectual disabilities and it's 27 part of a longitudinal study of growing old in Ireland. 28 29 But we're always looking for evidence of positive change and I went through the two 30 reports and I think I spotted three, now I'm holding my hand up that they are not 31 identical studies, but in the 2011 study, unlike the 2005 study, lack of facilities, 32 negative attitudes and self consciousness were identified by McCarron and fellow 33 researcher as actually not issues. Now albeit with people with intellectual 34 disabilities, not including as Hannon did, people with physical or sensory Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 84 1 disabilities. 2 3 Something just might be happening. It's early days, we'll keep an eye on it, there 4 are six years in the difference and a lot of good work happened in those six years. 5 6 I then went on and looked at McCarron's findings, 80% of people with intellectual 7 disabilities involved in mild physical activity, 46% involved in moderate physical 8 activity and 15 and a half -- now most of us would be inclined to say 15 and a half 9 that's much too low, that is much too low, but look at the opportunity we have to 10 take the 80% to move them up to moderate, take the moderate into vigorous -- it's a 11 matter of looking at who is involved, rather than focusing on whose not there, and 12 trying to work in order to make those people who are already up for it, role models 13 and social supports to those who are still on the sideline. 14 15 The Irish sports monitor found that people with disabilities were more likely than 16 people without disabilities to be both club members and volunteers. I know they are 17 not active, but they are in the space. They are in the space which means that if 18 they are asked, if they are supported, the chances are that we can get these people 19 to get active. 20 21 The Sido programme, Fiona mentioned it earlier, in the pilot years of 2007 to 2008, 4 22 and a half thousand people involved in programmes, that's impressive over a little 23 under a two year period, and she also highlighted the fact that we've gone from -- 24 since the Sido programme started we've gone from eight cerebral palsy Ireland Bocce 25 leagues to 29. So there is some evidence that good stuff is happening out there. 26 27 We also have the development of the, I'll look with my IT Tralee eyes, we have good 28 stuff happening locally as well, the degree and proposed masters in the area of APA, 29 so capacity building is happening, people make places, capacity will make the 30 difference for the future. 31 32 Just before I go on, I'd like to share with you a little, a fond memory that I have, 33 apologies to my colleagues who have heard this story a hundred times, but over 20 34 years ago I was having lunch with my late father in a restaurant, we were looking out Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 85 1 the window and we were along the -- beside a cove on the west coast of Ireland, my 2 father who was born at the beginning of 1917, so we was a World War 1 baby, said to 3 me isn't that a wonderful site? Being in my early 20s or whatever I was, I looked 4 out waiting to see a lovely car or fancy yacht, all I saw was a crowd gargling away 5 having a few drinks on a sunny summer afternoon, I said dad I don't know what you are 6 talking about, all I see is a crowd out there having a few drinks in the sunshine. 7 Oh, yes he said, but look who's paying for the round? A woman! 8 9 And your point dad? Because the point was lost on me. When he was -- and he was 10 actually reared in a pub in Ireland, when he was being reared they had a women's 11 snug, a what? I've heard of a snug in a pub, no this was a woman's snug. Because 12 you couldn't be seen drinking, you couldn't be up at the bar. 13 14 He also mentioned that when he first started to date, I'm reckoning that was about 15 the 1940s, when he went into a restaurant there were two menus, the man's menu and 16 the woman's menu and the difference? The women didn't have prices, the women's menu 17 didn't have prices. Well you know I've hung around pub as bit and been in a few 18 restaurants, no women's snugs any more, no women's menus, I get to pay the bills! 19 20 I suppose the point that I'm making is that we change, society changes. Do I think 21 we'll see change in the whole area of APA? You know, what I'd love to think is that 22 in my lifetime, in the next 50 years or so somebody will turn to me and say what's 23 Adapted Physical Activity? Or what's inclusive physical activity? Because we'll 24 have reached a space where like ladies snug and ladies menu, we can drop those terms. 25 That's my dream. 26 27 Just coming back again to the whole area of evaluation and measurement, I took this 28 from a book edited by Vasil Gurgeneloff in Brunel on managed sports develop. It's 29 important to note that we can't measure everything, we just can't. 30 31 "The real advance consists of having made some people feel more human. How do you 32 measure that? How do you measure the amount of dignity that people accumulate? How 33 do you quantify the disappearance of apathy? With what machines do you evaluate 34 someone's rediscovered identity, the power that they now feel to set their own goals, Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 86 1 and not merely take what others hand down to them. With what graphs do you chart the 2 curves of increased memory, increased self reliance, increased group solidarity, 3 increased critical awareness?" 4 5 And I think we need to be careful about becoming overly obsessed with data and 6 figures, and that's why Fiona Coyne this morning told us two stories, but they 7 weren't fiction, they were real, they were stories of positive change, stories of 8 development. 9 10 We need to keep gathering those and we need to use those as evidence of the strength 11 within the APA community. 12 13 My dream, what's APA? I suppose what I would hope is that individual citizens will 14 feel included, that local communities will live inclusion and we've got to remember 15 that every citizen, all of us is embedded in a community. And communities living 16 inclusion has implications far beyond sport, we're talking about employment, talking 17 about schools, we're talking about transport, we're talking about health, we heard 18 stories over the weekend of health professionals being rather stand offish when it 19 comes to physical activity, and that goes for everybody, universally that is probably 20 the case. 21 22 So there is a job of work to be done in the broader communities, we can't do it all 23 on our own, we can certainly tell positive stories and we can highlight the 24 differences that we have made on our own sector, and speaking of our own sector, we 25 also need to be thinking about sports policies, so that they enact inclusion, and 26 here I'm thinking of patterns of funding to sport, we need to challenge those. 27 28 I often ask my first years what criteria would you use if you were the dictator in 29 Ireland and you were allowed to decide what money would be given where, and it's 30 heartening so many of them mention, I would give most of the money to most of the 31 inclusive sports. They are only 18 or 19 years of age, they get it. 32 33 Again over 20 years ago I had the pleasure of driving Rob Thorpe the former director 34 of the Sports Development Centre in Loughborough University between Dublin Airport Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 87 1 and a conference in Waterford, I had never heard of sports development, so he 2 explained what it was about to me, and he said at that stage, people involved in 3 development work are constantly trying to work themselves out of a job. 4 5 It's not about us, it's about broader society. It's about making a difference on a 6 grander scale. 7 8 And finally, we want a situation where Ireland is inclusive. And I suppose what I 9 would be saying there is surely that's the very least a country that is a republic 10 should aspire to? 11 12 Just a couple of final words, I chose appreciative planning and action today for 13 three reasons, one, because it's an absolute shameless play on the acronym APA! 14 15 Two, because the more I read about it, the more I see a synergy, a complimentarity 16 between the beliefs and philosophies that underpin appreciative planning and action 17 and the beliefs and philosophies that underpin Adapted Physical Activity. 18 19 And my third reason, is because I genuinely want to pay tribute to all of those, of 20 you, who are involved in the area of APA, for the passionate, energetic and fruitful 21 work that you do on a day-to-day basis in order to make the active choice the easy 22 choice for an expanding number of citizens. Thank you very much indeed. 23 24 MR O'FLYNN: Thank you very much Una, one of our Paralympic athletes Paul Ryan has a 25 small presentation to make to Una. 26 27 Thank you everyone. In a few minutes I'll open the floor to you to put your 28 questions to our expert panel, but first we have a number of awards to give out. 29 30 Can I invite to the stage please Pat Flanagan and also Senator Martin Conway, the 31 Seanad spokesperson for equality and disability. 32 33 I'll introduce to you now Senator Martin Conway. 34 Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 88 1 SENATOR CONWAY: You know as I listened to Una Moynihan speaking, if anyone ever 2 wonders why or how the IT in Tralee has become internationally recognised for the 3 work it's doing in APA, all they ever need to do is listen to the quality of the last 4 speaker. I think it's indicative. 5 6 It's indicative of the talent and quality that's obviously available in the IT 7 Tralee. 8 9 I'm Martin Conway, I'm a Fine Gael Senator, I'm the Fine Gael spokesperson and 10 government spokesperson on disability and equality in the Senate. The reason the 11 Taoiseach gave me that particular portfolio is because I am the only parliamentarian 12 in Ireland at the moment with a disability. 13 14 I have 16 percent vision and as such I am the only legally blind person to have been 15 elected to either Houses of the Oireachtas, which is an indictment in it's own right, 16 but it's a fact. And I'd like to at this stage apologise to the press people and the 17 people looking after PR, that I don't have a prepared script because for obvious 18 reasons I don't use one! 19 20 With that I know I'm the third government speaker here at this conference, because of 21 the stature of the conference, the fact it is an international conference, you did 22 have the Minister with responsibility for disabilities Katherine Lynch here on Sunday 23 morning, and you had Minister Jimmy Deenihan, Minister for Arts, Culture and the 24 Gaeltacht here last night, so as the third I don't know what more I can add to what's 25 already been said, except sometimes in Ireland they keep the more interesting wine 26 till last! 27 28 But sports is the one way that equality can be achieved, where people feel a sense of 29 belonging and a sense of empowerment. When you look at Kerry, where this conference 30 is being held, and its sporting achievement in football over the years, and I note 31 Pat Flanagan's involvement, but when this country was divided by civil war in the 32 1920s, the one thing that brought people together and helped heal the wounds of the 33 civil war in the 1920s was football, and that started in Kerry. 34 Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 89 1 So it's ironic that the CARA project and the IT Tralee is based in Kerry, that it's 2 moving to a new generation of involvement, and a new generation of bringing people 3 together, and a new generation of equality. And I have learned a huge amount from my 4 brief visit here today. 5 6 I want to commend and welcome the people from all over Europe, the 31 countries that 7 have attended this conference and what I like most about the theme of this 8 conference, it's putting research into action. Because when I was in primary school 9 going to integrated education in west Clare, I would have been last to be selected to 10 be part of any five aside, ten aside or 15 aside. And I was lucky that I was even 11 selected, because had I been in a wheelchair or I had a mobility difficulty, in that 12 regard I wouldn't have been selected at all. 13 14 The one childhood memory everybody has is of being involved in a team, being part of 15 a team, it doesn't matter whether you win or lose, but it's the sense of belonging, 16 the sense of involvement, the sense of being equal and that's what it's all about. 17 18 I was at a conference in Vienna, the end of -- I was very privileged to be asked to 19 speak at it, the end of January, it was run by the Zero Foundation, which effectively 20 is a foundation set up to monitor implementation of the UN Convention for the Rights 21 of People with Disabilities and the motto at that was "zero barriers". I agree with 22 Una Moynihan in what she says, we need to be in a situation where the words APA are 23 not relevant because they don't matter because we live in an equal society. 24 25 There is no reason why we can't live in an equal society. I'd like to live in a 26 political society that's equal as well, unfortunately to a large extent we are not 27 and I suppose indicative of that is the fact that there is no member from any of the 28 minority groups elected to Parliament, there is only one person with a disability, 29 there is a very small percentage of women. 30 31 But in all our fields and our disciplines and all our areas of expertise we have to 32 strive for equality in every sense of the word. With that I am today, I suppose, 33 urging the government to ratify the UN Convention for the Rights of People with 34 Disabilities during our Presidency of the EU in January, between January and June. Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 90 1 2 Because as you know, article 30 Section 5 specifically deals with the issue of sport. 3 And where we as a country to be able to put our hands up and say yes we have ratified 4 the UN Convention for the Rights of People with Disabilities, well then we are 5 signing up to the fact that people with disabilities have, should and can and need to 6 have a legal and moral and every other right to access to supports and to be involved 7 in activities, sporting activities, outdoor activities and that level of equality as 8 a nation, we'll most definitely have signed up to. 9 10 I'm not going to delay you here today, I want to hear what the expert panel have to 11 say as well. All I want to do is thank you all very much for attending Tralee, I 12 spoke to the Minister with responsibility for sport, Leo Varadkar, this morning, I 13 told him I was speaking here, he wanted to send a message of thanks to you for coming 14 here, we are in a recession and we need every bob we can get so before you go spend 15 everything you can! 16 17 All I will say is remember you have come once, when you go, when you are leaving and 18 flying, look back at Killarney, when you look back, that will be a message to come 19 back. So I look forward, as an Irish citizen to welcoming all our international 20 visitors back here at some stage in the future, either to another conference or on a 21 private visit. 22 23 With that again I'd like to commend the people who organised this absolutely 24 brilliant event, it was well organised, it's one of the best international 25 conferences I've been at, it has been micro managed by people like Niamh Daffy and 26 her colleagues, and I think that they have done a wonderful job. 27 28 With that I'd like to wish you a safe journey home and go raibh mile maith agat. 29 30 MR FLANAGAN: Thanks very much Senator. Can I just note that the political 31 representation and commentary at the conference from the word go, with the Minister 32 for Disability Kathleen Lynch has been hugely significant for us over the weekend, 33 and the level of support and interest and time that they have given the conference 34 and our work in Ireland in general in adapted is hugely encouraging to all us at Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 91 1 local, national, education services and we hope that that support will continue and 2 manifest itself into resources and money for the programmes that we try to implement 3 both at third level and educating at local community level. Thanks very much again 4 for your support. 5 6 We had a fantastic poster competition as you know, the posters in relation to 7 scientific posters and innovative posters were requested by the organising and 8 Scientific Committee and we had a fantastic entry and interest and I'd just ask Jose 9 and Daniel to join us to present the awards for the four best posters. 10 11 There will be a presentation to the two best innovative awards and also a 12 commendation for some that don't win an award, but were highly recommended by the 13 committee and two presentations for the best scientific awards, and can I thank the 14 poster presenters for being at their stands and entertaining us and their knowledge 15 and depth of experience and enlightening us in a lot of areas of Adapted Physical 16 Activity, lots of them are young, interesting and enthusiastic researchers, right 17 from undergraduate level right up to Post-Doctoral level, so thank you for that 18 interest and your commitment and we look forward to similar quality posters in Madrid 19 with Javier in 2014 and obviously in 2013 with Dilara in Turkey. So thank you for 20 your entry and your application during the weekend. 21 22 So I can call on Jose first for the scientific awards and hope the people getting the 23 awards are here, we think we've checked. 24 25 MR FERRARIA: Good afternoon everyone, just a brief comment about the procedure of 26 this scientific poster awards. The scientific commission of the conference just 27 assessed all the posters and those posters were assessed twice by two different 28 members and then there was a pool with the best posters and those were again assessed 29 by different members that didn't assess those posters at the previous moment. So it 30 was a system we used to get the final decision. 31 32 I would like to start by highlighting two posters that are highly commended, and it 33 is poster 7 parents perspective on residential sport camp for children with visual 34 impairments from Cathy Freedman from Ireland. Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 92 1 2 The second highly commended poster is poster 7, The Effects of Six-week Indoor Rock 3 Climbing Programme by Conor Maguire. 4 5 Let's go straight for the innovative poster presentation winners and my colleague 6 will present them. 7 8 MR TYNDALL: Good afternoon I will present the innovative presentation winners, we'll 9 do second prize first, then first prize, to add to the drama of the event! 10 11 Second prize goes to poster number 33, Wind Surfing for all Increasing Participation 12 and Accessibility Through Equipment Modification from Kate Karen Halu (As heard). 13 14 And then our first place winner, our winner, poster number 29; Move, Groove, Get 15 Active, a Family Centred Recreation Programme for Children with Autism from Dr Karen 16 Smail and her colleague Dr Marie Manning from the college of Charleston South 17 Carolina. 18 19 MR FERRARIA: Finally we go into the scientific posters section and the second prize 20 goes to poster number 3, A Qualitative Analysis of the 2008 Paralympic Games 21 representative in one broad national newspaper in the Republic of Ireland from 22 Aisling Greer. 23 24 And the winner is poster number 28, Early Intervention for Infants With Motor Delays. 25 26 MR FLANAGAN: Again well done to the prize winners and all those who entered and 27 entertained us with their poster presentations. 28 29 We know we have a second presentation now from the EUFAPA federation and Maria Dinold 30 will present that. 31 32 MS DINOLD: As I announced yesterday we have since two years EUFAPA awards and this 33 goes now to young investigators, it was applied for by five candidates and we went to 34 their oral presentations and the committee wanted to award the three best now, it was Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 93 1 our decision that last year's winner will announce the winners. 2 3 MR BORRESMAN: So I can bring the drama! We need to admit it was a very tough 4 decision, I think all five presentations have done a really great job bringing their 5 story up, it was not easy, we know some of them were speaking in their native 6 language, others were not, but that didn't matter at all. 7 8 We scored them, three of them I want us to select, the runners up for today are from 9 let's start with the lady, Valerie Marconi, is she here? Please come forward. And 10 second runner up, from Ireland, I think the Irish will love that, Kevin Smith. 11 12 To relieve stress -- and the winner of the EUFAPA Young Investigators Award of 2012 13 comes from ... a country very close to where we are, from Ireland ... bear with me 14 Deirdre O'Donoghue. 15 16 MS O'DONOGHUE: I wasn't expecting this at all, but for people who weren't at my 17 presentation, I undertook a study with three teenagers with severe physical 18 disability and I'm just a messenger and they are the guys that really deserve this 19 award because it was a qualitative study, they were interviewed about their 20 participation and they just highlighted -- they wanted their voices to be heard, I 21 just represented their voices. 22 23 So it's for them really. So thank you very much. 24 25 MR O'FLYNN: Congratulations to all our award winners and thank you presenters. 26 There is one more presentation I think to make, Pat Flanagan will announce it. 27 28 MR FLANAGAN: I'd like to take this opportunity to just congratulate two people who 29 have done a large amount of work to actually, the vast majority of the work to be 30 honest, to make this conference a successful as it has been and a very good 31 experience. 32 33 But before that I just want to mention a couple of very important people who have 34 also made it possible for this conference to operate and they are people and Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 94 1 organisations who sponsored many of the keynote speakers, I'd like to thank National 2 Learning Network for supporting David Carless's presence here, National Council for 3 the Blind for supporting our ability to attract Lauren Lieberman to work with us 4 again which was great, the National Disability Authority who we're delighted to link 5 up with and hopefully on an on-going basis from now on for supporting Dr James 6 Rimmer's presence, the Department of Justice who actually supported significantly in 7 relation to Donna Goodwin, Una Moynihan and Jennifer Harris and our good friends and 8 constant supporter since 2003 the Irish Sport Council, Coral Leisure who supported 9 the practicals, Failte Ireland way back when we started looking for seed money to get 10 this project off the ground were very supportive, Hyundai Adams in Tralee who 11 supported us in relation to transporting our keynotes, guests and some of our 12 volunteers. Tralee Printing who help us with CARA Focus and all the printing for the 13 congress, the county board for the great events in the GAA and Irish Wheelchair Sport 14 for their assistance in the preparation of the conference, just a round of applause 15 for all our sponsors. 16 17 Finally it comes down to two. I'd like to make a presentation to the woman who was 18 in contact with you all and got e-mails, got the money from you to pay to come to the 19 conference, was put under major pressure with this project, but actually is a 20 graduate thankfully of health and leisure at IT Tralee, wonderful person, I'm her 21 agent following the conference any job offers or that type of thing you have to come 22 through me so I can get a cut from her great success, we'd just like to make a 23 presentation to Linda Raymond. 24 25 Just thank Antoinette for helping with the presentation, Antoinette is a student of 26 our own programme at IT Tralee with St. John of God's services and they have been a 27 service who have been working in and through the college since we started the adapted 28 programme in 1997/98 and we deal with a small number of young adults over a number of 29 years and they do a three-year diploma programme at the college and Antoinette is one 30 of our star graduates so just to thank her for her assistance here. 31 32 And when we come to APA in Ireland there is only one person and that's Niamh Daffy, 33 so I'd like to make a presentation to Niamh. I'm sorry for making her walk so far! 34 Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 95 1 And you're still here! Finally, at the end of the conference which will be closed 2 right at the end by our good friend Martin Kudlacek, star dancer! 3 4 And we'd like to just call on our keynote speakers, if they'd just, at the end of 5 each, if they'd just come up to the podium if they would and join us up here, in 6 relation -- we sometimes don't have time for questions and definitely what Una's 7 presentation asked a lot of questions of us, a lot of our keynote speakers asked 8 questions of us, and as good APA people I'm sure we ask questions of ourselves all 9 the time, so we like at the end of all of our conferences we have had a short, short! 10 Expert panel review, just for people to comment on any major issues that they feel, 11 what can we take away from this conference, I did start with three questions: How 12 can we improve access and participation of people with disabilities? How can we 13 improve our teaching, coaching, research by engaging with and getting advice from, 14 direction from? Jennifer Harris spoke about the social model, we can't operate 15 without listening and hearing the voice of people with disabilities. And the third 16 challenge is a tough one, for 2022 how do we get more people with disabilities to be 17 at these events as teachers, researchers, lecturers, coaches, leaders, in the area of 18 Adapted Physical Activity? 19 20 So that's just to start with the three questions, there may be other more important 21 ones we can address, but maybe the key notes would join us up here at the podium, if 22 there is any questions and we'll have the mic for going around if there is any key 23 questions and then we'll go to Martin to close, so about 20 minutes or half an hour 24 or so and that will be the end of our festivities so if the key notes would join us 25 here please. 26 27 MR O'FLYNN: Thank you Pat and thank you also to Senator Conway. Over the last three 28 days we have been fortunate to hear from some of the world's foremost academics on 29 Adapted Physical Activity now to conclude the 2012 congress it's their turn to hear 30 from you. 31 32 Over the next half hour our expert panel will take your questions, we have I think 33 coming to the stage Dr Donna Goodwin, Dr David Carless, Dr Vicky Tolfrey, Dr James 34 Rimmer and Dr Jennifer Harris. Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 96 1 2 And as always we have some microphones, looking at them all here I'm tempted to say 3 is there a doctor in the house? There is quite a few of them! So does anybody want 4 to start the ball rolling? 5 6 Perhaps you'd like -- perhaps I'll start just to get us on the way, at the start of 7 the congress Pat posed some challenges, do you think at the end of a three-day 8 congress we're any closer to meeting those challenges than we were a few days ago? 9 Feel free to jump in? 10 11 Dr Carless could you remind me of the first question? 12 13 MR O'FLYNN: Pat do you want to restate the challenges? 14 15 MR FLANAGAN: The toughest, the third one, how can APA, it's inspired by our Sporting 16 Chance programme which we link with the National Learning Network, which facilitates 17 people with disabilities to enter the leisure, sports, physical education, it's a 18 bridging course between third level education and an interest in being physically 19 active and training and it's aimed at facilitating people to become qualified as 20 coaches and then maybe to go on to a degree, masters and so on programme. How can we 21 do that better, more, does anyone have a view on it? 22 23 DR RIMMER: I look at it as when you look at sports and starting to build recruitment 24 for young individuals getting involved in a profession, it's extremely important to 25 start at an early age, I know in the US we have a grant component that deals with 26 capacity building, how do you bring students into the field of disability, they start 27 in high school, funding projects where you bring high school students in the summer 28 and learn about engineering and disability, or physical therapy and working with 29 people with disability, so I think we have to do the same sort of thing and adapt the 30 physical activity, try to get some sort of dissemination framework where we get out 31 to communities where there are people with disabilities, children, youth, adolescents 32 and share with them the opportunities that we have in many different employment 33 situations in Adapted Physical Activity. 34 Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 97 1 MR O'FLYNN: I want you to get involved so anyone with anything put your hand up. 2 3 DR GOODWIN: I think we need role models for people to look up to in advanced 4 education, I have had the privilege of working alongside five graduate students who 5 self declare as having impairments so I think we need to think and speak about the 6 opportunities available for people at the advance level of the academy. 7 8 I know that when my students are completed and out there they are going to attract 9 further students so our universities need to find resources that make this education 10 as barrier free as possible. 11 12 DR TOLFREY: Just adding to that as well, obviously my area is more Paralympic level, 13 I expect the audience here are feeding the youngsters up the avenue, but it's very 14 important, it was touched upon in the psychology session this afternoon in terms of 15 when you are working with elite, it's managing expectations beyond their performance 16 and I think they make excellent role models and certainly a lot of the retired 17 athletes that I work with are the ambassadors, they are coaching, in management and 18 we need to utilise those. I know Paralympics GB is certainly putting a retirement 19 programme in place post London, with it being a home games, I expect several people 20 will have hung on to then retire at London and certainly manage the expectations of 21 those have been through to a family and friends programme and that's going to be 22 rolled out in the new year, if not in October/November time. 23 24 DR RIMMER: Just one more comment, I'm not sure about Ireland but I know Trinity 25 College has a programme in disability studies, I moved from a kinesiology physical 26 education department to a department of disability studies where I sat around a table 27 with colleagues who were part of a disability movement, these are people, many had 28 disabilities and attended conferences that related to disability, one of the biggest 29 ones in the US is the society for disability studies, and most people who go to 30 society for disability studies either have many, many students with disabilities in 31 their programmes at the university level or have disabilities themselves. 32 33 In the few sessions that I have been to and the few years that I have been to that 34 conference I have never seen anyone present a paper on health promotion or Adapted Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 98 1 Physical Activity, so one of the possible recruitment strategies, I mention this in 2 my presentation is that we have to get out of the box and stop presenting to 3 ourselves and start presenting to other colleagues in disciplines like physiotherapy, 4 disability studies, occupational therapy, health promotion in one of the hats I wear 5 in the US is chair of the disability -- I was chair of the disability section of the 6 American Public Health Association, so I'm infiltrating physical activity into 7 networks that have no knowledge or awareness of what we do as Adapted Physical 8 Activity professionals. 9 10 If each one of us left here today choosing one conference to go to outside of APA 11 that would be enormously beneficial to our population and the professionals we work 12 with and people we serve in spreading and disseminating the information and the 13 importance of our profession. 14 15 MR O'FLYNN: I would agree and bounce that question back to all of you, saying that 16 we have had a huge amount of engagement here from as we say, 33 countries, what we 17 perhaps haven't seen here is enough of the other specialities, we haven't seen a huge 18 amount of physiotherapists here, occupational therapists even PE teachers, can you 19 explain other than you going out to them, why are they not coming to a conference 20 like this? 21 22 SPEAKER: I've an answer, I'm a physiotherapist. 23 24 MR O'FLYNN: The lone physiotherapist here you are very welcome. 25 26 SPEAKER: I can't speak for other countries but in Ireland we don't have APA in our 27 bachelor degree, so I think that's something that needs to happen. I have given a 28 lecture to university students in Limerick around the study that did I, it's 29 completely new, completely alien concept to them, so it's something that needs to 30 happen at university level, it needs to be incorporated into modules of some sort, in 31 physiotherapy education, I can't speak for OTs, but this is just for physio. 32 33 MR O'FLYNN: Perhaps it could be part of the continuous professional development that 34 there could be greater scores for coming to something like this? Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 99 1 2 SPEAKER: It is taking off, there are health promotion, physiotherapists running 3 health promotion study days so it is starting to take off and we are starting to look 4 at physical activity, measuring physical activity, measuring sedentary behaviours in 5 individuals, so you'll probably see a lot more of us in conferences in the future. 6 7 MR O'FLYNN: I heard you speak earlier perhaps you'd tell everybody whereby you work. 8 9 SPEAKER: I work in the Central Remedial Clinic in Dublin, an organisation for 10 children and teenagers and adults with physical disabilities. 11 12 MR O'FLYNN: Great to hear from somebody from another discipline. 13 14 SPEAKER: I am a physiotherapist myself too, so I just want to for example the 15 Finnish situation, I am working in vocational training in Finland as part of student 16 success team, but also a lecturer at the Polytechnic where they train 17 physiotherapists, what I have noticed now in many schools for physiotherapy in 18 Finland there is an increased number of credits in APA, they have seen it's 19 important, it's not all in one-to-one, after rehab people need to find a place to 20 exercise so it's a take home message, we need to get more multidisciplinary in these 21 conferences to invite them, because it's a PR thing, in the physio articles you don't 22 find ads like join EUCAPA, perhaps something for the next conference is get it more 23 multidisciplinary. 24 25 MS DINOLD: I would like to add because I am also in the international federation of 26 Adapted Physical Activity I am representative in a body which is working group of the 27 international Council physical education in sport, five organisations together caring 28 for physical education and it is now, we are developing that adapted physical 29 education and inclusive physical education is always invited to come to their 30 conferences as well, and I was invited to Sweden recently and also in Korea so it's 31 worldwide, globally that those who are concerned with quality physical education are 32 also concerned to include everyone so that's a good thing to report I think. 33 34 DR RIMMER: I guess one of the things I struggle with, now I'm in the school of Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 100 1 health professional, I have appointments in physical therapy and occupational 2 therapy, there is no kinesiology programme that I am involved with at all, one of the 3 problems we have APA is not the first term we started with. The term was originally 4 it was when I went to school many years ago was adapted physical education, so the 5 perception of a lot of older physical and occupational therapists is that we really 6 deal with children and a lot of what physical therapy deals with and occupational 7 therapy is with adults after a stroke or head injury, and they do have a small number 8 of paediatric physical therapists but that's a small subsection of the American 9 Physical Therapy Association, so I guess I have another question to throw out and 10 that is how do we begin to build jobs, financially, remuneration positions where 11 people can work after school hours in health clubs and sports facilities, are there 12 countries in the audience where that's happening? Because in the US most people who 13 find a job in Adapted Physical Activity are in a residential setting where they are 14 working with adults or in a school system, you rarely see a qualified APA 15 professional working in a YMCA or fitness centre, it's ironic to me that most people 16 who need fitness centres are not going to them or they don't have the level of 17 accessibility that they need and we have these young exercise science students who 18 come out with three or four courses in biochemistry, organic chemistry could get in 19 medical school and spending most of their time in fitness facilities recruiting 20 people, doing personal training or cleaning equipment, so we have a population that 21 use fitness centres and a highly talented group of people that know nothing about 22 disability, we have to start using the APA professionals to piece this together and 23 get more presence beyond schools and into other kinds of community based venues. 24 25 MR O'FLYNN: Wouldn't that be great, does anybody have an answer for that? 26 27 While they are getting that working can I announce there is an APAVET meeting at 6 28 o'clock in the Writers room and also someone dropped a phone, if you want to collect 29 it please feel free to come up. 30 31 SPEAKER: Just to say I was at the IHRSA convention in LA in March and that's the 32 global body for the fitness sector, for the health club sector, they have 11,000 33 health clubs in the States and globally involved in the provision of fitness 34 activities for all people, as you know in the States the regulations are beginning to Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 101 1 be enforced in relation to access for people with disabilities and I suppose there is 2 a little bit of resistance around the manner in which they have been, they are coming 3 in at the moment. 4 5 How and ever, in relation to IHRSA there is a group called IC REPs that's the 6 Confederation of Registers for Exercise Professionals and on the IC REPs within that 7 group there are over 60,000 fitness professionals in that group who come under the 8 various different registers that exist around the world, at the moment the register 9 in Australia, in New Zealand and the UK and South Africa and Ireland are on there and 10 there is new registers coming on board in Hong Kong, UAE, Dubai and we also have a 11 solution for the States because of the federal structure in the States it was 12 difficult to have one national register, but through the training providers like ACE 13 and ACSM we have devised a solution to accredit training programmes and bring fitness 14 programmes into registers in the States. 15 16 So that would enable approximately over 100,000 fitness instructors would be 17 represented by these 6 to 7 registers and all come under the banner of IC REPs and IC 18 REPs and IHRSA have agreed to promote and advocate for people with disabilities, for 19 enabling and examining how the environment will become more conducive in health clubs 20 to enable people with disabilities to access them and also how we can encourage 21 fitness instructor to take on disability training to enable them to work with people 22 with disabilities. 23 24 So given the new countries coming on board there, there will soon be under that 25 banner well over 100,000 fitness instructors who will be encouraged to do training if 26 they haven't already done it through CPD and CEC programmes on disability studies and 27 Adapted Physical Activity and I think that will open up the capacity of that to open 28 up the health club sector towards the inclusion of people with disabilities is vast, 29 I would be very positive as a result of this discussions that took place in LA and 30 subsequent discussions around that topic, that we'll begin to see a lot more movement 31 in that sector around inclusion as well. 32 33 DR RIMMER: I would encourage one thing, this happens a lot, I'm sure there were 34 disability specialists in the meeting you were talking about, no there weren't? See Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 102 1 this is the problem that I was mentioning in my presentation, everything gets 2 retrofitted, so when we figure out we did something wrong we go back and have to 3 correct it, so I would encourage you, since you got a tremendous opportunity to cut 4 right into a network that has potential to reach a large group of exercise 5 professionals that they don't forget disability, but we have to make sure we have the 6 content as they start to go through this curriculum or certification that at the 7 front end Adapted Physical Activity professionals are brought into the discussion on 8 how to do that. 9 10 SPEAKER: A lot of the registers already have disability modules, that disability 11 professionals run for them, but this is about increasing the amount of times that 12 those programmes are run, encouraging people to engage with the disability programmes 13 and maybe we are going to look at options such as increasing the number of CECs for 14 disability related programmes or the credits that people get for doing them, that's 15 one of the things that's on the table in terms of trying to increase the provision 16 for people with disabilities, the other aspect that IHRSA are looking at which I was 17 also feeding into at the meeting was the development of club certification standards 18 and one of the aspects that have is accessibility, so there is some research being 19 done at the moment in relation to examining international club certification 20 standards and increasing the amount of accessibility related standards that are in, 21 embedded in those standards overall. 22 23 DR RIMMER: Maybe I didn't make the point clear, I was just going to suggest someone 24 like you or an APA professional be on the committee I'm not sure who the rep is from 25 the US, but it would be good to have a collective group of APA professionals right at 26 the front so you get a good mixture of content. In the US we have a certified 27 inclusive fitness training certificate through the American College of Sports 28 Medicine for the frontline fitness professional, I know in the Australia and UK they 29 have their own programmes, so there is a lot available but my suggestion is if you 30 can take this message back that we have a good profession here as you know, we would 31 like to be part of any discussion moving forward in training future professionals. 32 33 MR O'FLYNN: Did I see someone over this side? We're coming towards the close. 34 Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 103 1 I just want to ask a question, perhaps it would be Dr Tolfrey who could have a first 2 stab at this, obviously it will be a big year for disability sport, one of my jobs is 3 to manage the television coverage of Paralympics in Ireland, we have seen a huge 4 growth in the appetite of the general public to watch Paralympic sport, do you 5 believe there is also a trickle down, do you think the interest and acceptance of 6 Paralympic sport has helped fuel a greater acceptance, a greater inclusion, or does 7 it trickle down at all? 8 9 DR TOLFREY: I'll ask for a little clarification of trickle down, are you saying the 10 message is going down to the grass-roots level? 11 12 MR O'FLYNN: At a simple level, do you see more people coming in to Paralympic sport 13 actually seeing this is what I can do, I can do more, do you see a flow in of people 14 who are on the way to elite or starting at a lower level? 15 16 DR TOLFREY: Personally because I worked through four Paralympic cycles now and 17 throughout all that journey the media has increased, so even with not saying the home 18 games, I certainly have seen more depth, particularly if I use wheelchair basketball 19 as an example where the coach has got huge amount of depth and if you actually look 20 at the women's basketball squad you see the junior athletes coming through there, we 21 have the ability to choose some really good 16, 17, 18 year olds in the national 22 squad, so I would certainly re-enforce that somehow message is getting out there. 23 24 It's interesting because I guess from my perspective sometimes the coaches at high 25 performance level may still have this, in British sports there is money available and 26 I'm not sure that's a good thing or a bad thing in the sense that the coaches are 27 looking for excellence, they may be looking for minimum disability is one cautionary 28 note, possibly in the sense that them as a sport, them as a performance director 29 needs to get a gold medal, silver medal, etcetera to maintain a status and there may 30 be a slight question there as to saying if you are looking for minimum disability are 31 they really picking up some of the individuals that were getting through Adapted 32 Physical Activity programmes. 33 34 That said I personally think it's tremendous in terms of the media coverage, the Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 104 1 amount of interest we actually get now, the talent days, open days, number of people 2 that are trying to look at sport as an avenue, obviously we all know there is 3 different fast tracking in how we get that, but we also see one thing I find 4 intriguing is actually transitions between sports now, so you might have a swimmer 5 who retired in terms of swimming, they are finding cycling and you might have a 6 cyclist who is going to rowing etc, there is a lot of movement around sport but it's 7 interesting to look at the journeys. 8 9 MR FLANAGAN: Could I ask a final question, first of all to thank the key notes for 10 their patience and perseverance and attendance and openness to meet the delegates at 11 the conference throughout the weekend, I'd like to thank you very much for that you 12 have been very, very helpful to everybody, I have seen you talk with lots of people 13 in groups right throughout the weekend. 14 15 Could I ask for one comment from each of you if you could sum up and give us one bit 16 of advice in relation to how we could keep APA going or improve APA in Ireland in the 17 next -- we'll never get a line up like this again in Ireland, so we'd like one 18 sentence or one comment if you want to start on the right-hand side or whatever. 19 20 MR O'FLYNN: But you are against the clock. One comment. 21 22 DR GOODWIN: One of the things that really impressed me here was the link to 23 government, I think that having government representatives with a commitment, but 24 also hearing the voices first hand is phenomenal, so I would suggest you continue to 25 do that and certainly Canada can learn that lesson from you. 26 27 DR CARLESS: Probably another surprise for a narrative researcher to say this, but I 28 think the challenges we face as we all know, far exceed any individual's capacities, 29 so I think it's very important to bring the community together, so I think one thing 30 for me that this conference has done has been an arena to share stories, that I felt 31 included and connected to others more than before I came, I think that's important to 32 sustain, to keep a group inertia if you like going. 33 34 DR HARRIS: What I think has impressed me most is your sense of inclusiveness at the Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 105 1 conference and impressed me as a movement, I think you have a movement here which has 2 its own strength and its own capacities and I don't think you need to worry about the 3 future, I think the future is bright, I've met so many people here who are so 4 inspired about the subject, so passionate about inclusiveness and about going forward 5 and looking to the future, in many, many different areas, and this is a highly 6 complicated thing that you are doing, bringing together so many different 7 disciplines, and you are so determined to do it. So I wish you all the best with 8 that and I think you are going to succeed. 9 10 DR TOLFREY: In one sentence it's difficult actually, I think I would just concur 11 with what's said in the sense that I think there is some great momentum, interesting 12 for me and I have discussed this with colleagues after my presentation, is that it's 13 just starting again for me. I am now in a stage obviously the Rio cycle although 14 London hasn't happened so I'm putting already the plans in place, I have an 15 intervention period now for the next two years with athletes in terms of training 16 strategies, and then I'll be a fly on the wall, so I'm getting quite excited actually 17 for post games. 18 19 DR RIMMER: I have been very, very impressed with the structure of the meeting, the 20 conference, everybody -- every country needs a Pat Flanagan I really do think this is 21 probably the best thing that could happen to this country, and Europe, Martin you 22 come close but I really do see this as for me not being integrally involved with the 23 APA profession at this level any more, it was a great pleasure to come back and speak 24 to my colleagues, my friends, the people that I have grown-up with in my profession. 25 26 I just have to say this is a truly wonderful profession, one that is greatly, greatly 27 under utilised in the public health infrastructure and I see Ireland really beginning 28 to take the lead in setting a new bar for promoting physical activity, and Adapted 29 Physical Activity not only in Ireland and across the world. I thank you for inviting 30 me, you did an outstanding job of putting this conference together. Thank you. 31 32 MR O'FLYNN: Thank you Dr James Rimmer, thank you to all our experts and also to the 33 organising committee, thanks to the stenographers and thanks to all of you for being 34 such an enthusiastic, knowledgeable and committed group. We salute all of you. Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 106 1 2 Now to close EUCAPA 2012 can I invite the President of the European Federation of 3 Adapted Physical Activity, Dr Martin Kudlacek. 4 5 DR KUDLACEK: Thank you very much. What intensive three days! 6 7 We work hard, and we also partied hard! 8 9 I loved it, both parts of it. I learned a lot and there is not enough time to share 10 with you all that I have learned. What is important is to look to the future, and it 11 was forgotten today to announce that the young investigator awardee, Deirdre, has won 12 a conference fee waiver for the next EUCAPA so we'll support her to be in Madrid so 13 again applause for Deirdre. 14 15 And I have seen a lot of talent, especially from Irish scholars, you are very shy 16 about your capacities to do research, but you need to have more confidence and so I'm 17 counting on about 20 new submissions to European Journal of Adapted Physical 18 Activity, because I have seen some research that would be worthy publishing, so it 19 will make me very busy, but you will have a good chance to succeed. 20 21 I said three days ago like this is like a kind of family reunion, we shared together, 22 we come together and shared stories, we shared stories about our professional lives 23 and experiences, and by sharing the stories some of them were more a narrative, some 24 more analytic and as different members of the family have different approach to 25 seeing the world, but I think we learned from the stories, learned a lot, so I hope 26 you know where the next family reunion, yeah? It will be in Istanbul in Turkey when 27 there will be another opportunity to get together and work hard and party hard! 28 Because Turkey has lovely music as well and food and dancing, so it will be good 29 family reunion I believe. 30 31 So it will be next year in Istanbul. And then we get back to Madrid and I am yet to 32 learn about dances, Spanish dances, but I still have two years to learn but I have 33 learned -- I heard so much nice things about Spain, so that should be wonderful, but 34 Javier has a very tough job, very tough job, because Pat and his team have raised the Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 107 1 bar very high. So I think Javier will need all your brains and your support, and I 2 tried to start yesterday, to create a small competition between Finnish team and 3 Swedish team and there is a competition that I challenged the Swedish team if they 4 can bring more people to 2014 EUCAPA so they would be winners and I would buy them 5 some, not beer, some good Spanish wine, not for everybody but to a table, that's a 6 good challenge. 7 8 There is a promise for some Italian colleagues they will bring an Italian crew and 9 Yves Eberhard who received the award told me colleagues from France will come for the 10 conference. 11 12 So it was lovely, many people were mentioned by Pat... 13 14 MR FLANAGAN: Can I mention one more person, he is going to rush away, someone who 15 has been wonderful, lovely to our key notes and guest speakers and politicians and 16 they all know him which really helps us, he is always pleasant but pointed in his 17 comments and reminds them of their importance to us, Niall O'Flynn from RTE has been 18 MC. He is rushing away to the train to get back to his family after giving us four 19 days, he is a very busy man so we are very grateful for his help over the conference. 20 21 DR KUDLACEK: So it's very important again to recognise the volunteers, I know it was 22 said already during the lunch, but we had two rooms there, so I would like to ask you 23 all to give a round of applause to volunteers, and some volunteers are still here. 24 25 And I actually don't know the names of all members of the team that is behind Pat, 26 but there is a great amount of talent and passion in Ireland, and actually it's 27 inspiring me and it's making my work as EUFAPA leader for this time easy, so thanks 28 for the team and to Pat, so thank you to you. 29 30 I think I should come up with some family story because the most important man has 31 just left the room, but he should be back in a minute. 32 33 About the dancing, yeah? 34 Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 108 1 MS RAYMOND: Can I just say I have compiled a EUCAPA DVD, a slide show of you having 2 a great fun at the GAA event, the banquet last night, I have a picture of you up in 3 the air like this -- like a crazy man dancing, so that will be available online and 4 I'll also post you the link so you have some great memories of EUCAPA 2012 hopefully. 5 6 DR KUDLACEK: I cannot really close EUCAPA without Pat being here so you have to bear 7 with me. 8 9 I think apart from having the photographs and information EUCAPA website they will 10 also be on the website of European Federation of APA, and you can also find a link 11 there to the European journal. They were not so much crowds in the general assembly 12 we had just a few days ago, so good news is that -- can I have somebody just call Pat 13 so I'm not speaking here ten minutes, I can but you might have other programmes 14 there. 15 16 We have just published a new issue of European journal of APA last week, we are 17 rushing to make sure it is published just before the conference, and as Pedro 18 mentioned we have raised the number of journal articles to five, it's all free of 19 charge, it is online and it's a database, so it's an excellent opportunity for junior 20 scholars to start, I call it a younger brother of APAC born in 1984 so it's a bit 21 older than European journal of Adapted Physical Activity. 22 23 We have quite interesting articles there and two of them actually coming from Asia so 24 the journal is growing bigger than just being embedded in Europe. 25 26 I see that Pat is not coming, but as I mentioned already I can't really conclude the 27 EUCAPA without him, so I was very excited to hear the keynote speakers apart from 28 other presentations and I actually didn't manage to go to any practical sessions, I 29 tried very hard, I sent out scouts and they were very impressed especially with water 30 activities and different opportunities to try out different things. It was the first 31 time I have ever listened to Dr Vicky Tolfrey it was very inspiring and learning 32 about the Paralympic movement and I truly hope we'll manage the way how to bring 33 European federation closer to Paralympic movement so we can grow together and bring 34 the knowledge that is in the Paralympic movement. Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 109 1 2 James was exactly true that he said if every European country has Pat Flanagan then 3 we would be flourishing but maybe Ireland also lost for a few minutes Pat Flanagan as 4 well. I see he is not coming. But I see your attention and tiredness growing so I 5 will use the man that supports all activities of Pat and support team as Vicky told 6 us is equally as important as athletes so if we consider Pat as being the Paralympic 7 or Olympic athlete then the team is so important. 8 9 So Tom is here, he is a man of action, I know he is skillful, very hard-working. So 10 thanks to Pat, thanks to Tom and see you all in Madrid. Thank you very much. 11 12 MR AYLWARD: Well ladies and gentlemen, we've come to the end of a very hectic couple 13 of days here in Kerry, when I moved down here from Dublin where I grew up, capital of 14 Ireland, there was a sort of assumption that when you move to the west of Ireland 15 that it would have a slower pace of life, things would be very sleepy and quiet, I 16 quickly realised that things were way more hectic down here than they were up in 17 Dublin. 18 19 But anyway, I hope you have seen many sides of County Kerry in terms of the hectic 20 nature of our dedication to APA and our desire to do lots of practical things and 21 hopefully you have had some time to enjoy some of the countryside here. 22 23 Unfortunately Pat can't be with us because he is dropping somebody to the train 24 station in his accessible car, so it falls to me on behalf of the organising 25 committee for EUCAPA 2012 to once again say thank you very much for coming to us as 26 delegates ... oh nearly, but here he is, thank goodness! 27 28 MR FLANAGAN: I was less out of breath after Riverdance last night! 29 30 I thought Martin was going to finalise, because it is a EUFAPA conference, we are 31 really grateful that EUFAPA -- I am going to do a lot of training for Madrid I just 32 ran from the train station, jumped a train, collected some bags, pushed a car, jumped 33 a wall, fell on the way in ... so hopefully you will have a safe journey home, thank 34 you for coming to Kerry, we have really enjoyed having you, I think Martin is right, Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie 110 1 we are a real family, I did say I think on Saturday night we feel we are among 2 friends, I think we have more friends. Looking forward to seeing you in Madrid. 3 Thank you very much. 4 5 Conference concluded 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 Premier Captioning & Realtime Ltd www.pcr.ie