Osoyoos family devotes years to getting playgrounds accessible for their special-needs son

“Inclusivity and accessibility is often a very beautiful word, a tag word of ‘Yay look what we're doing,’ but it's a very slow process and it's very unfair.”

An Osoyoos mom has been working for the past four years to see options for her child added to playgrounds in the area, after finding little in the town for those with special needs.

Leanne Scott and her husband Dale Fuhr started off with one piece of equipment in Osoyoos, trying to get an accessible swing for their 10-year-old son Callum to be able to use.

“The needs that these people have are just nowhere. If you put yourself in a wheelchair and try to get around, you will just be absolutely gobsmacked and especially if you are a person in a wheelchair who isn't particularly strong,” Scott said.

“You don't know until you're in it. I didn't think about it in any way, shape or form until I had a son that was in a wheelchair.”

The family moved out to the area from Saskatchewan to have a better climate for their son, who had highly complex special needs.

While in the process of updating the playground slowly began in Osoyoos, Scott connected with a fundraising group building a playground in Oliver.

“Just in the conversation, I sort of said, 'Oh is this new toddler park going to be accessible and inclusive?’

“It was one of those moments as a parent where you say something like that and you don't expect the worst but you're still kind of used to it for lack of a better word because inclusivity is not cheap.”

To her surprise, Scott received an immediate response from the group.

They told her, “‘Oh my goodness, thank goodness you contacted us. We never would have thought of it. We of course will do that.’”

Scott wanted the group that was adapting a park for special needs kids to come at it from a realistic standpoint, as it can heavily grow the costs it will take to build.

“It doesn't matter what it costs, it has to be accessible. We can't build just another park. it's just not the right thing to do,” they responded.

“That was their stance from then on. They invited me to come and be on their board as a consultant for kids with these needs. It was just like a dream, a positive dream. I took some time to reach out to as many special needs families that I could on different specialized Facebook pages and asked people ‘What would you want with a park?” Scott explained.

From there, the meetings went by with ease, working with designers, contractors, grant applications and staff, the dream park was becoming a reality.

“An entire playground that is accessible, that's phenomenal...We go there all the time with our son.”

However, when the swing arrived in Osoyoos, the ground was a problem. Wood chips.

“It is an accepted special-needs or inclusive ground coverage, but unfortunately in the reality of everyday life using it with a wheelchair, or a walker or stroller, it's absolutely awful. It doesn't work. So we began a discussion then back with the city about changing that,” Scott said.

“I said ‘If you have this swing, this beautiful accessible swing and then you have ground cover that makes it impossible for a young person in a wheelchair to get to, it's almost worse than not having it.’”

Scott went back to work about putting in the application for the ground coverage grant that she had used before with the group in Oliver.

“While we were sourcing other places for funding...we were in the middle of trying to figure out what to do.”

A grant applied to by the town of Osoyoos to the Tire Stewardship BC’s (TSBC) 2020 Community Grant Program came through, along with a generous donation from The Spirit Of the Games head, Mike Campol, a private donation from Kevin Primeau and the Town of Osoyoos Gerald Davis, who coordinated the operation.

“With the remainder, we are now working with Parks and Recreations here to purchase another swing for the other park, and it'll probably take some time and have some ground coverage issues as well, but it's on its way.”

And the playground swings made accessible for their son, has changed everything in his life too.

“I have a beautiful video of him pushing his wheelchair from the gate to the swing. That was one of the first times he ever moved his wheelchair of his own compulsion...The first time I saw him push and push and push because it works, he continued to do it and now, he does it all the time, in the house everywhere. That was directly from that park,” Scott said.

“When your child doesn't move and all of a sudden he's madly pushing a wheelchair to get to something and he's able to do it because the environment allows it.

More resources for those with special needs have been coming up in the town too, including a private washroom in the park that has space for breastfeeding, is accessible for wheelchairs under sinks and it has an adult-sized change table that can be raised and lowered. A Mobi-mat was also installed at Gyro beach last summer to allow wheels on the beach.

“I'm glad we were able to facilitate some movement in the inclusivity direction in this area….We work with people with disabilities and all sorts of people with chronic pain, rehab and etc. But we did all of the because of Callum.”

“It's another thing that he's given us...And I know people will say 'Well how many other children are there in wheelchairs' and I say 'First and foremost, it doesn't matter. It's his right to move amongst the world.'"

The couple continues to be advocates for the special-needs community and more accessible resources are coming to their area as a result.

Scott and Fuhr are both ABM Neuromovement Practitioners running their business, Move Therapies. For more information, visit their website or email [email protected]