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Fanning Grant Helps Children with ASD Learn to Swim

Thanks to the Jack Fanning Memorial Foundation’s generous grant, 25 children living in homes in Lido Beach and Glen Cove have an opportunity to acquire life-saving swimming skills. Learning to swim is especially challenging for children with ASD, because most teaching environments, such as community pools, are very large, crowded and noisy. Children with ASD need a quiet, focused environment for learning, with small student to teacher ratios.

The CRP’s Community Inclusion and Recreation Program provides various recreational opportunities tailored to meet the needs of these children. The children have participated in a variety of activities such as ballet classes, basketball, track, horseback riding, and art classes. Over the past two years, the progress and growing confidence of the children in this program has been striking.

The CRP has partnered with the Sid Jacobson Jewish Community Center (SJJCC) in Roslyn to provide private swimming lessons with sole access to their pool for three hours on Saturday mornings. SJJCC has a six-lane, 25-yard lap pool that is equipped with a handicapped chair lift, a kiddie pool and a whirlpool. The SJJCC regularly works with special needs children through its Special Needs Aquatic Program. The children from the CRP are learning to swim from instructors who have experience working with children with special needs.

The generous grant from the Jack Fanning Memorial Foundation not only allows the Children’s Residential Program to provide swimming activities for the children in the program, but it also gives the children the opportunity to build their confidence.