Twenty three-year-old Bradford resident, Ashley Guay is a Recreation Therapist who has been working the frontlines, assisting seniors throughout the entire pandemic.
“But what does a recreation therapist do?” Is a question she gets asked a lot, and she was happy to chat with BradfordToday about her experience in the field and her passion for helping others, predominantly, the senior population.
“By definition therapeutic recreation is a process of using functional intervention, education and recreation and leisure participation,” she explained. “We focus on different domains of a person’s life.”
The five main domains include:
1) Mental and cognitive functioning
2) Physical functioning
3) Emotional functioning
4) Social functioning
5) Spiritual functioning
Basically, “We work to work ourselves out of a job,” she shared. “We want to give them the independence and skills and activities so they can go off and do them on their own.
The main benefit is to improve a person’s quality of life and optimal health.
Guay was a recreation therapist at Bradford retirement residence The Elden for eight months before leaving to take on a four month contract at Bradford Valley Care Community. In May, she got a call from a friend who worked at Bradford Valley letting her know that due to the pandemic, many recreation therapy staff had to take time off of work to care for their children and were in need of some help.
“They (The Elden) were sad to see me go and made me a giant card and there were some tears but they understood,” she said. .
Bradford Valley Care Community had a COVID-19 outbreak in April, and Guay knew she had to help.
While she didn’t deal with COVID patients directly, she was there to support the other residents and their needs.
The majority of facilities, especially long term care and retirement homes, typically offer large group activities that encourage socialization, but those have been put on hold and it is the recreation therapist who is often the sole form of human interaction.
“When we’re not there, their families are normally coming in getting visits from loved ones...and they’re not getting any of that right now,” she explained.
“So while our role was important before the pandemic, our role is even more important now because we are that sole person (interacting with them).”
While working throughout the pandemic, she says she has had to switch up some of her programming to ensure her residents are hitting all the domain functions, but in a one on one setting, and with minimal equipment that can be disinfected between users.
With visitors restricted to the building, the mental health of the residents can be affected as well. Most are used to having special guests and volunteers coming in everyday to facilitate and take part in special events and programs, so without that, the recreation therapists need to make sure they are finding other ways to keep residents socially and spiritually engaged.
A large part of her job now she says is keeping residents connected with their loved ones, whether through phone calls or the video calls.
“It’s all about finding ways that we can work on those five domains, to still meet those goals,” she said.
Guay was first drawn to the field of recreation therapy after seeing first hand how her grandmother interacted with the recreation therapist who lived at Bradford Valley Care Community from February - December 2013.
Her grandmother had been living in Toronto and had dementia that had progressed to the point where she was no longer speaking.
Guay left class a little bit early that day her grandmother moved into Bradford Valley, and it’s a day she will never forget.
“We were just walking her (the grandmother) around the unit and someone came up and got down on their knees, eye to eye with my grandma,” she described.
It was the recreation therapist, who introduced herself and asked her grandmother what her name was.
“Me and my mom looked at each other and were like ‘yeah she’s not going to speak’,” remembers Guay.
But 30 seconds later, her grandmother responded “Hi, my name’s Helen, nice to meet you.”
Guay and her mother were shocked. “Having not heard my grandmother speak for so long, it was insane to watch.”
Guay said she always wanted to be a teacher, but after having witnessed this experience between her grandmother and the recreation therapist, she knew she found her true calling.
"In a way I still get to do what I wanted, because I always wanted to be a teacher, it’s just a different type of teaching,” she described.
She would visit her grandmother frequently, and began volunteering at the centre, interacting with the residents while spending time with her grandmother. She eventually went on to do her high school co-op at the long term care home as well, and even held her first job there as a receptionist.
“It is a difficult field to work in,” she acknowledged, noting seeing people in their final stage of life and decline is hard, but “it’s definitely become a passion.”
She has worked all different types of populations, but says there’s just something different about working with seniors.
“They are the people that built our world. They are the people that made the foundations for where we are today,” she said. “So if I can be there to help be there to help guide their loved ones and stay connected and figure out ways to communicate, then I am more than happy doing what I’m doing.”
“We do a lot more than I think people realize,” she said, noting the field is still relatively new (50 years old) and is constantly advocating for her field of work.
She compared a recreation therapist to grout that holds the bricks of interdisciplinary professions like physiotherapists, doctors, nurses and PSWs, together.
“They’re concrete and important to the people we support. We’re the grout because we have the ability to boost their goals and help everything stick. While the bricks can stand on their own, we are an extra support that helps make the wall stronger,” she explained.
Guay’s contract with Bradford Valley will end in come September, at which point she will be starting her Masters Program in Gerontology.
She hopes to continue to advocate for her profession. She has her own blog, website and social media accounts dedicated to raising awareness about the importance of recreational therapy.
“It’s such a unique profession and it’s so much fun,” she said. “I love the idea of being able to teach people about it, it’s so different and I have so much love for it.”
You can follow Guay on Instagram @confessionsofarectherapist or check out here blog here.
