Hello everyone, and welcome to this week’s blog! As I’m sure most of you have already heard, Hadrian has recently launched a new fund raising project to support us in building a Community Disability Hub. The Hub will include a Massage Suite, Café and a new Hydrotherapy Pool which is why we thought in keeping with the Hydrotherapy theme we would share what a Hydro session looks like for us here in Loveday’s Class and the benefits that these sessions bring to the children…
We have Hydro every Tuesday morning and it is definitely the children’s favourite time of the week because our sessions are full of fun!
We work on lots of different things in the pool and our sessions are tailored to meet the needs of our children. Some children in class use these sessions to work on their Halliwick outcomes which will enable them to achieve between levels 1-10 of the Hadrian Water Skills Assessment.
These skills promote confidence and independence as well as the skills we need to be able to learn to swim such as being able to kick our legs or control our breathing. We use lots of different toys, songs and fun games to help us to learn these skills.
Hydrotherapy is also used to support children with their physical skills – some of our children use mobility aids to assist them with their walking but once they’re in the pool they can be totally independent which is absolutely amazing! We’ve had so many children who’ve taken their first independent steps in the pool and it’s always so wonderful to see!
There’s also lots of fantastic communication that goes on in the pool because the children are so motivated by the water! We always hear lots of happy vocalisations and giggles. We are able to use symbols and photographs in the pool to make requests – the watering cans and colanders are always a favourite and it’s usually when the water is being poured on to the staff!
Now this all sounds like hard work but I’m sure you can see from the pictures that it doesn’t seem like work to us because we’re all too busy having too much fun!
Loveday and Team x
