On Florida International University Week: How do we improve access to swimming and water safety for children with disabilities?
Tana Carson, assistant professor of occupational therapy, explores this issue.
Dr. Tana Bleser Carson earned her master’s in occupational therapy and a PhD in behavioral and cognitive neuroscience from the University of Florida. Dr. Carson has been engaged in autism research since 2005 and has 7 years of clinical experience in pediatric occupational therapy. She is currently an assistant professor at Florida International University where she leads research, training and service programs focused on two important yet understudied areas of autism – drowning prevention and auditory hyper-reactivity. Dr. Carson is a certified adapted swim instructor and an America Red Cross Water Safety Instructor Trainer. She co-facilitates the Aquatic Occupational Therapy Community of Practice for the American Occupational Therapy Association, co-founded IMPACT Autism at UF and serves as a board member for Kids 4 Kids USA, a charitable organization focused on adaptive sports. She is owner of Adaptive Associates, a consulting company focused on education, research, and service.
Improving Access to Swimming and Water Safety for Children with Disabilities
Drowning is one of the leading causes of death in children. And children with disabilities are at especially high risk. Autistic children, for example, drown at twice the rate of their peers without disabilities.
My co-author Tania Santiago Perez and I analyzed data from 164 children, ages 3 to 18, who participated in a five-day adapted swim instruction program. The program is designed to teach foundational water safety and swimming skills. These are skills like entering and exiting the pool safely, floating, breath control, resurfacing after submersion, and basic strokes – adapted for children with disabilities.
We measured each child’s swim skill level on Day 1 and again on Day 5 using a classification based on American Red Cross levels: non-swimmer, beginner, intermediate, and advanced. Our primary question was simple: Can children with disabilities make measurable gains in just five days?
The results were encouraging. Sixty-two percent of participants gained at least one swim skill level over the five-day program.
We also explored whether personal factors like age, diagnosis, or behavior predicted progress. Age had a modest positive correlation with improvement overall. For children with Down syndrome, age was a significant predictor: for every additional year of age, the rate of improvement increased by about ten percent.
We asked instructors why some children did not progress. Among autistic children, fearfulness was the number one reason. For children with Down syndrome, the most common explanation was needing more time or practice.
This study shows that with skilled instruction and appropriate adaptations, children with disabilities can acquire meaningful swim skills in just five days.
The variation in progress, however, highlights the need for diagnosis-sensitive strategies, such as extra sessions or anxiety support.
Expanding access to adapted swim programs could be a powerful step toward drowning prevention and inclusion in aquatic activities.
Read More:
[Frontiers] – Effectiveness of a 5-day adapted swim instruction program for children with disabilities
[UFHealth] – Swimming for everyone
[South Dade Newsleader] – Keys Kids Swim
[Key West Chamber of Commerce] – Swim Classes Teach Basic Water Safety Skills to All Kindergarteners at Key Largo School
Kids4Kids USA
[AOTA] – Social learning through AOTA’s Communities of Practice
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