Earlier this spring, OSOT Assistant Professor Dr. Stephanie Glegg and colleagues from G’aahlandee Xaadee, the School of Nursing, and Gitmaxmak’ay Nisga’a received a grant from UBC’s Community-University Engagement Support Fund (CUES) for a project entitled “Bringing KidsAction to Prince Rupert.” This project aims to integrate KidsAction Coaching, which supports physical activity for people with disabilities, into two or more Indigenous cultural and recreational programs in Prince Rupert.
We interviewed Dr. Glegg to learn more about this project and the partnership behind it.
How does KidsAction work? What makes it effective for supporting engagement in physical activity?
KidsAction is an evidence-based approach to support neurodiverse children within community-based physical activity programs. It incorporates elements that have shown to be effective in supporting diverse health outcomes for children and their families, but that may not be present in all programs. Some of the key principles include individualized support and goal-setting for each child (there’s no one-size-fits-all approach that works for everyone), home practice to augment the benefits of what are usually once per week programs, facilitating social interaction for both kids and families/caregivers, establishing methods to journey with families and programs over the course of the program to celebrate progress and attend to areas of growth, and incorporating an Indigenous and community lens. Indigenous Peoples have some really insightful teachings developed over thousands of years, and bringing communities together provides a shared focus on working together to support initiatives like this.
How did the idea of partnering with G’aahlandee Xaadee first arise?
The project came about because I already had a trusting relationship with Symbia Barnaby, one of our Indigenous implementation partners in Prince Rupert. We met as volunteers in an anti-racism group and discovered a lot of shared experiences and the same passion for health equity and social justice. I’d invited her to partner on a national project called Connecting for Care. I’d raised the KidsAction project at the time, but there wasn’t an organization doing physical activity programs for children with neurodisabilities in her community. When we revisited the idea last year, she proposed adapting KidsAction for Indigenous cultural dance. This idea was really intriguing – I reflected on it, brought it back to the team, and we decided to go for it. There will be a lot of learning on both sides as we work to integrate Western and Indigenous ways of knowing and being, and that’s one of the things that makes this project so exciting for us all.
What adaptations will be needed to implement KidsAction in Rupert?
KidsAction was initially designed with gym-based physical activity programs in mind, in partnership with Special Olympics BC. Our last phase of funding allowed us to adapt it for a variety of settings, including adapted skiing and snowboarding, Challenger Baseball, schools, daycares, an Indigenous Young Warriors program, and a virtual program delivered province-wide via Zoom. This project is a bit different though – we’ll be adapting it for Indigenous cultural dance programs. To do this, we will work closely with our Indigenous partners, who are the experts in their program. We’ll do a task analysis of the dances to identify aspects of participation that might benefit from tailored goal-setting or home practice, learn from families about their goals, and develop resources specific to the dances, in partnership with an Indigenous videographer. We will also co-design our data gathering tools and the type of information that is important for the dances groups to have so that they are culturally sensitive, and address what’s most important to the community.
How far along are you in the implementation? What have you discovered so far, and what remains to be done?
We’re just in the early phases – we call this phase Exploration, where we build relationships, learn more about the community and the program – what it looks like, who is involved, the strengths that already exist that we will build on, and what they’d like from the project. Then we’ll co-design the implementation plan with community members., We’re planning training for community members this summer. These things take time if we want to do them well and in a culturally safe way, and the community drives the timeline. At this point, we plan to launch in the fall.
What are your hopes for the future of this work?
We’ve been working to spread KidsAction to communities across Canada. Our previous work was in BC, Saskatchewan and Ontario. We’d love to share our learnings from this project with other Indigenous communities, as well as increase its reach to kids from other underserved groups. We have a sustainability plan that includes community capacity building, including a Train-the-Trainer model, so that ongoing training can be led by communities and organizations without the need for us. So that will be our focus moving forward.
This project is funded by the Kids Brain Health Network and Brain Canada Foundation (see below), with matching funds from MSHRBC, and by OSOT’s Research Initiative Fund in addition to the CUES.
We gratefully acknowledge the contributions from Kids Brain Health Network funded through the Strategic Science Fund, a program of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, and the Canada Brain Research Fund, an innovative arrangement between the Government of Canada (through Health Canada) and Brain Canada Foundation.
Nous remercions chaleureusement les contributions du Réseau pour la santé du cerveau des enfants financé par les fonds stratégique des sciences, un programme d’innovation, Sciences et Développement économique Canada, et grâce au Fonds canadien de recherche sur le cerveau, un partenariat novateur entre le gouvernement du Canada (par l’entremise de Santé Canada) et la Fondation Brain Canada.
Photo Credits: Photos courtesy of Symbia Barnaby and Dr. Stephanie Glegg