For the past few years, Adela Villanueva Perez has been frustrated by how difficult it is to find fun and social activities for her son Carlos.
Carlos was diagnosed with autism at four years old and solely because of his diagnosis, he hasn’t been allowed to participate in programming for kids his age.
“In the beginning, I felt terrible because he was just a child, and as a parent, you only want him to go play and have fun,” Villanueva Perez says. “I kept asking myself where he could go and play and have fun with other kids.”
Enter: Marquette Occupational Therapy’s ComMUnOT — pronounced “community” — adaptive summer sports camp for children with disabilities. Funded by a $75,000 grant from the Greater Milwaukee Foundation, the camp is led by occupational therapy faculty members Dr. Michele Sheehan and Dr. Ann E. Millard.
“My passion is to provide every child with the opportunity to learn and grow through play-based activities and supporting the needs of individual children,” Sheehan says. “In addition to the camps for children, we include learning sessions for parents while their child is attending the camp.”
Millard says the inspiration for the camp came from wanting to be in the community helping children by offering free and easily accessible OT services surrounding Marquette.
“This camp meets this goal, but also allows future OT’s to learn alongside community members,” Millard says.
Under Millard and Sheehan’s guidance, recent occupational therapy doctorate graduate David Rosario centered his capstone project on the ComMUnOT camps and led other students as they worked with the children.
“From the beginning, dating back to our first pediatric semester, we learn that play is life’s first occupation,” Rosario says. “There are so many important things your body learns when you play, like socialization, gross motor skills and understanding where your body is in space. All those skills help children develop in the long run toward adulthood.”
The ComMUnOT camp fills a need in Milwaukee, Millard says, because there isn’t a free adaptive sports camp like this in the area that focuses on OT.
“Adaptive sports combine gross motor and fine motor skills to work on occupations such as play and socialization in s structured format,” Millard says.
Villanueva Perez says the camp has been beneficial for Carlos and kids like him, given the variety of activities they practice.
“Each week they’re working on something new like throwing a ball around, learning to bowl or using a racket,” Villanueva Perez says. “I like how he is getting exposed to different skills and things he can do that interest him and that he has fun doing.”
Delores Sallis, founder of Parent University, a community organization that serves as a support network for families of color and their loved ones with disabilities, says what sets the camp apart from other programs is that children get to work with multiple Marquette students.
“Free camps are always useful because some families in the community have fixed incomes, but the drawback is that some of those camps don’t have enough staff for each child,” Sallis says. “The beauty of the ComMUnOT camps is that there are two or three students per child and they get the attention they need.”
Sallis says the social interaction between the campers and new people, including other children, is highly beneficial. Villanueva Perez agrees, citing Carlos’ familiarity with many adults but not with a lot of children his age.
“He’s been going to therapy since he was three years old, so I know he is fine interacting with adults and he is comfortable around them,” she says. “But around kids his age, he needs a little reminder and a little push that he can talk to other kids and play with them as friends, which is what the students are doing with him.”
Rosario says that throughout his time in the Occupational Therapy program, he was allowed to grow as a future therapist by being given opportunities to lead other students like he has during the ComMUnOT camps.
“It’s been cool to work on and refine my skills as an occupational therapist, but also to be a mentor to the younger students,” Rosario says. “I work with them and realize I’ve gone through the same struggles they experience as new students. I’ve been intimidated, I’ve been worried and had things not work, but thanks to my journey here, I’ve been able to steer them in the right direction, and I’m thankful for that role.”
Sheehan says she and Millard have had difficulty describing the feeling of satisfaction in seeing the concept of the ComMUnOT camps become a reality.
“Hearing the excitement in the student voices when they help a child accomplish a task that was challenging, and knowing they made a difference, is an amazing feeling,” Sheehan says. “But that does not compare to the joy of seeing the smile on a child’s face when they are successful at a challenging task through play-based interventions.”
The Occupational Therapy Department plans on continuing the adaptive sports camp every summer at no cost, as well as another free camp next summer. In the future, Sheehan says she and Millard want to offer three to four free camps each summer to meet the needs and interests of the children in the Milwaukee area.
For more information on ComMUnOT camps or to be placed on a list to be notified of next summer’s registration, email marquetteOT@marquette.edu
