TSM23-30. Ruth Smith Aquatic Therapy

Their Story Matters with Sara Troy and her guest Ruth Smith, on air from July 25th

I was born with water in my veins – or so it seems.

As a child I often wished that gills had been standard issue for humans. Water and I have always had an inseparable connection. For forty-two years, teaching and coaching of swimming in pools in Australia and overseas has been my genius.

At 14 I became an active Australian Surf Life Saving Club member and the first professional female Beach Inspector in New South Wales. My professional and volunteer hours were…wet. In my early career in the disability-care field I was fortunate to be introduced to hydroptherapy, The Halliwick Method and numerous influential mentors.

Water is my ‘impact vehicle’, the medium through which I facilitate the transformation of lives, especially when children with intellectual or physical challenges are added to the mix.

As National winner of the 2022 Australian ‘Teacher of Aquatics – Access & Inclusion’ award my work leading the Aquatic Therapy industry in Australia has been recognised by our national peak body.

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What is Aquatic Therapy?

Put simply it’s a water-based healing modality that utilises specialised equipment and techniques to enhance students’ proprioception, motor planning, self-regulation, fine and gross motor skills, cognitive focus, muscle tone, communication and co-ordination. Water safety and propulsion is a common therapeutic goal.

I’m inspired working with ‘neuro-diverse’ and physically challenged youngsters. It’s a soul-driven mission that I can’t explain. Simply, it’s a privilege from which I derive inexplicable and immeasurable satisfaction and sense of self-worth.

My legacy is to remain at the cutting edge, develop both research and university-level post graduate courses and continue the development of the next generation of aquatic professionals.

While ever I’m physically capable I’ll continue to have water logged skin and smell like a chlorine advertisement. Working with this challenged cohort is often like looking into another’s soul. At other times it’s like they have allowed me to cross over their threshold and am invited into their world. Maybe only fleeting at times, but it is there I have my greatest impact.

My WHY.

This if two fold.

Aquatic therapy – using the magical medium of water to work with students 1:1 with challenging behaviours which precludes them from participating in the traditional group swim class. For example, cerebral palsy, downs syndrome, autism, non verbal, hearing impaired, other rare conditions. AT uses the water to developed proprioception, motor planning skills, fine and gross motor skills, focus, pro social behaviours, co-ordination, etc. AT uses specialist equipment and has a multidisciplinary approach.

Around the world there is an increase of students with challenging behaviours into our traditional swimming lessons. Our teachers here in Australia are not well prepared for this neurodiversity within their lessons. I am concerned that we may lose more teachers from this industry if we don’t have them feeling empowered, confident and competent to work with this population. I, with my colleague Lyn, we are Aquatic Mentors and we are setting about providing training and support to swim school operators and their staff around this very subject.

It all started at Uni. I was doing Sport Science and was heading to the Australian Institute of Sport where I would be THE person to create the fastest swimmers on the planet. I was always interested in the way the body moved in water. I took an elective which saw me working with a pediatric physio who used the water as her therapy medium. I was hooked. Later in my travelling the world I was fortunate to work with James McMillan in England who developed the Halliwick method of teaching “handicapped” people to move efficiently throu the water. Returning home, another touch point was working with allied health professionals in the transport accident rehab facility – head injury unit. Again, water was used by the physios and OT’s for rehabilitation.

Those years stayed with me as I grew a family. I continued to be involved with teaching, coaching while helping people with disabilities finding employment. I found it easy to be amongst the neurodiverse community and in 2015 I was able to combine by love of the water and my gift of working with students with challenging behaviours in my own swimming centre.

I continued to travel and learn more and more after doing all I could here in Australia. I travelled to the USA and Canada and hope to plan another study tour to the Phillipines where they are doing interesting things in this space as well.

My dream is to have a Centre of Excellence for Aquatic Therapy, a purpose-built pool in Australia where the allied health professions can have rooms for their clients as well. It would be a multidisciplinary approach for clients from around the world all under the one roof. It would also be a place where people can come and train to be aquatic therapists from all around the world.

So now you know a little about me. If you are open to a conversation I can be reached by either my LinkedIn profile

linkedin.com/in/ruth-smith-aquatic-therapy

www.aquatic-mentors.com.au

or at rsmithuki1@gmail.com

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