Susanne Lesnik-Emas Ed.D., CTRS

Community Projects

Active Living for Persons with Aphasia

This program focuses on promoting active leisure engagement for individuals with aphasia. The purpose is to provide leisure education as well as social and recreational activities in a safe, homogeneous group environment. Surrounded by others with aphasia, participants can practice their social skills, build their confidence and ultimately feel comfortable enough to pursue independent recreation opportunities in their own communities. Current participants have been referred to the program from Philadelphia's Magee Rehab, Moss Rehab, Temple's speech clinic and by word of mouth. Although all participants have a diagnosis of aphasia, they are varied in their time post-stroke, their age at the time of stroke, their current age and their gender. In addition, participants represent the full spectrum of aphasia related difficulties (i.e. word retrieval, motor formulation of words, etc.); in addition to the aphasia, several participants have additional residual effects from their stroke that relate to their physical functioning.

This unique program is facilitated by Assistant Professor Dr. Susanne Lesnik-Emas, a Certified Therapeutic Recreation Therapist and also utilizes the creative endeavors of senior level therapeutic recreation students in developing and implementing multi-session program protocols. Periodically, the group collectively engages in community recreation opportunities such as attending sporting events, concerts and visiting museums. In an effort to assist students in experiencing an interdisciplinary approach, an objective for the future is to involve students representing an array of health care disciplines in the assessment, facilitation and evaluation of these social interaction programs. From August 2010 through May 2011, the program will receive financial support from an Innovations in Teaching grant provided by the College of Health Professions & Social Work.

Overview of the Senior Center at Home project

Senior Community Services is a social service agency based in Delaware County, PA. For several years the agency has sponsored the Senior Center at Home (SCAH) program predominately through funding from the PEW Charitable Trusts. SCAH serves older adults who are isolated and tend to be homebound by providing volunteers who come to the home to engage in recreation activities with the older adult. At this time, SCAH serves approximately 60 older adults in Delaware County. In the recent refunding of this program PEW asked for a more sophisticated manner of evaluation linked to specific outcomes and objectives. As a consultant to SCAH, Dr. Lesnik-Emas was asked to review the project objectives and projected outcomes and to design an assessment/evaluation plan. In designing this plan, Lesnik-Emas recommended a longitudinal approach, gathering data in 3 month increments, examining constructs of boredom and life satisfaction as well as symptoms of depression.

To implement this assessment task, Dr. Lesnik-Emas suggested involving Therapeutic Recreation students as assessors demonstrating the link between a student's academic and field based experience with assessment & documentation (TR 3101) and research & evaluation (TR4999). Beginning in September 2009, 2 TR students were oriented to the SCAH program and clients and then trained by Dr. Lesnik-Emas on the assessment protocol. These students scheduled home visits, implemented the assessment and scored the measures. In late November/early December, Dr. Kathy Coyle created a database and had students in the research & evaluation class practice data entry and the running of some basic statistical measures. In January new students were recruited to continue the quarterly gathering of data, and this procedure will continue over the next 2 years.

At specific points in the funded period, Dr. Lesnik-Emas will provide outcomes secured from the assessment & evaluation procedure; it is the intention that this outcome data will serve 2 purposes: 1) to determine the efficacy of the SCAH program through the tracking of SCAH's ability to maintain or improve their client's psychosocial state, and 2) to inform the care plan process so that volunteers can adjust their recreation interactions with clients to better meet the changing needs of those served.

In addition, Dr. Lesnik-Emas provides several hands-on trainings per year for the volunteers who provide the recreation engagement. These services are provided to SCAH through a small consulting budget within the PEW grant of $1500 per year, a portion of which provides a small stipend to the student workers ($100-150 per semester) and the remainder going to the Therapeutic Recreation department for the services provided by Dr. Lesnik-Emas and other faculty who may assist with the project. Current PEW funding for this project ends in March, 2012. It is the intention of this collaboration to expand the role and funds distributed to the Therapeutic Recreation department and to consider other potential joint projects; additionally there is the intention to publish and/or present the results of these efforts.