A Mobility Skills Training Program for Adults With Developmental Disabilities

Abstract

Twenty-nine adults with developmental disabilities were trained by an occupational therapist to use city buses for leisure outings to local shopping malls. Program evaluation was based on the number of times each program participant used his or her mobility skills to make an independent leisure outing. These data were collected for 1 year after each person left the program and were analyzed with the use of multiple regression procedures. The results revealed that the participants maintained their mobility skills for 1 year. Older women who shared common leisure interests as well as persons who were afforded more intensive individualized training were especially likely to use the city bus for leisure outings after the treatment program ended. This study demonstrates the long-term effectiveness of occupational therapy when specific treatment goals are matched with individualized training sequences for persons with developmental disabilities.

Occupational therapy and school‐to‐work transition: A preventive education model

“…Brown & Hammil, 1983) and criterion-reference measures (e.g. McInerney & McInerney, 1992) should be considered.…”

Computer-Assisted versus Teacher-Directed Teaching of Community Living Skills in People with a Mild Learning Disability

“…The community living skills have been very varied and include cooking (for example, Martin et ai, 1982), grocery shopping (for example, Matson and Long, 1986), banking (for example, Zencius et aI, 1990), telephone training (Leff, 1975), pedestrian skills (for example, Matson, 1980) and using public transport (for example, Mcinerney and Mcinerney, 1992). Studies vary in whether the training is primarily classroom based (for example, Matson, 1980), in vivo (for example, Rudrad et ai, 1984) or a combination of both (for example, Nietupski et at, 1983).…”

Validation of the Activities of Community Transportation model for individuals with cognitive impairments

“…stroke, brain injury) conditions face numerous obstacles to independent community travel [1][2][3][4][5]. For example, limited communication ability, challenging behaviours and impaired cognition impact the navigation skills requisite for successful community navigation [2,3,6].…”