This intervention aimed to evaluate the impact of peer-led, community-based wheelchair skills sessions and follow-up peer coaching on skills, confidence, independence and community participation / engagement.
It must be acknowledged that people living with a spinal cord injury are on a new and unexpected journey in their life. Once they are ready to engage in the community, opportunities for skills development must be available at times that suit. Recovery is a long-term process that continues outside of the formal rehabilitation setting and living in the community comes with additional challenges that are not faced in the rehabilitation environment.
Readiness for life skills development often doesn’t fit within hospital recovery timelines. As a result, there is a lack of funded opportunities for skills development in the community. This suggests barriers related to environmental context and resources and skills. Behaviour change theory suggests that these barriers could be addressed through environmental restructuring - which involves making changes to the physical or social environment to facilitate the desired behaviour and make it easier for individuals to engage in that behaviour - and enablement - which involves providing individuals with the necessary skills, knowledge, and resources to perform the desired behaviour.
We engaged young men living with a spinal cord injury in community-based wheelchair skills sessions to increase their level of independence and freedom, as well as follow-up peer coaching sessions to discuss the potential for further skills development.
Pre-course conversations were undertaken to ensure that the sessions were tailored to achieve outcomes that were meaningful to participants.
Following the session, participants were invited to participate in a follow-up peer coaching session, focused on identifying opportunities for skills practice, further goals, gaps and need for additional support.
Despite low participation in the intervention, the following results provide an insight into the benefits to those individuals who participated, alongside reflections on how intervention design and implementation could be adapted in the future:
An evaluation tool - developed by the BehaviourWorks Australia research team, in partnership with AQA - will be made available for those seeking to build on future iterations of this program.
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