MODULE BB-6
CAMP PROGRAM FOR SCOUTS WITH SPECIAL NEEDS AND DISABILITIES
COPE AND CLIMBING
IN THIS MODULE:
- OVERVIEW
- THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A DISABILITY SIMULATION AND COPE
- MAKE BELAYING AND SPOTTING ACCESSIBLE TOO
- ENHANCED SPOTTING FOR LOW COPE ACTIVITIES
- PARTICIPANTS WITH REDUCED VISION
- PARTICIPANTS WITH REDUCED HEARING OR COMMUNICATION
- MOBILITY ACCESS TO THE CLIMBING AREA
- ADJUSTING FOR LIMITED STRENGTH, DEXTERITY, OR ENDURANCE
- SUGGESTED EQUIPMENT LIST
OVERVIEW
This module is for COPE and Climbing Directors at BSA Scout Camps and it supplements the information in Belay On, which is the authoritative document. This module can be used to train the rest of your team and it applies to all ages of Scouting. The goal is to provide a concise guide that focuses on how various types of disabilities interact with challenge activities and aerial activities during BSA COPE and Climbing.
This module focuses on things that are within the control of the activity staff rather than permanent improvements to the facilities. While there are ways to build facilities to make them more accessible, that is outside the scope of this module. COPE and Climbing are different from most BSA activities because the facilities are often built where they can be temporarily changed by the program staff to adjust difficulty.
COPE and Climbing staff have significant advantages over other camp staff when working with Scouts with hidden special needs like learning disabilities, ADHD, autism, or anxiety disorders because the learning is very intentional in nature. In COPE and Climbing:
- Working to overcome fear and anxiety is part of the regular program. Coming to the activity with more fear or anxiety than average is manageable.
- Differences in ability are expected and those differences are leveraged. Individual strengths can be leaned into. Group effort can offset individual limitations.
- Modifying a Scout’s capability is routinely used as a tool to shift the group dynamic and remove natural advantages. A Scout with a special need or disability does not have to be alone with a challenge.
- Inclusion is intentional. All Scouts in the group are empowered to be involved in the problem solving and the facilitator can change the rules to make this happen.
- We don’t make assumptions about what people can and cannot do, or what they do or don’t know already.
What isn’t already part of the nature of COPE and Climbing is that voices, noise, and tone of voice can increase anxiety. For one-at-a-time activities, things work best when the participant is relying on just one person and just one voice for instructions and advice, so you may have to ask others to be quiet. During group activities, people talking over one another is a communication problem and increases anxiety. Being shouted at may be a trigger for some people with anxiety-related special needs. Fortunately, two-way radio headsets are now available and affordable in a variety of styles. Headsets allow both people to talk in a soft relaxed manner while being clearly heard over a distance. There are headsets on the market that fit under a helmet. Another option is to use Bluetooth earbuds with cell phones.
For the purpose of this module, we need to invent some vocabulary to keep things straight. We will use the word “impair” very specifically to describe when a facilitator temporarily modifies the abilities of a participant; for example using a blindfold, earmuffs, mittens, or instructions not to speak. The words “special need” and “disability” will be used to identify long-term conditions that reduce or alter one’s abilities. With that said, it isn’t going to matter much whether a person has a disability or was impaired by the facilitator. The adaptations you will use are the same.
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A DISABILITY SIMULATION AND COPE
Most disability advocates discourage the use of simulations to build empathy for those with a disability. Their concerns are meaningful and they can be managed if we in Scouting make an effort to present the activity properly.
The biggest concern is that we don’t want to encourage Scouts to look upon anyone with pity, or to see them as less of a person because they are disabled. It is easy for a well-intentioned Scout to try to “fix things” for another person when they don’t need it, or when they don’t want to be “fixed.”[1] A short simulation of a disability will always seem harder to you than what life is actually like for a person with a disability. The real person has had a lot of time to learn how to adapt and has built up a skill set that makes life less burdensome, but the person in the simulation hasn’t had time to learn how to cope.
Since using impairments is so commonplace in COPE, when you introduce the activity to the group, be explicit that your intent is to challenge their problem-solving and not to give anyone the experience of being disabled.
When you facilitate a COPE activity you will pay attention to which Scouts seem to have a special need or disability. Some of these differences won’t be apparent until after you start with the activity because they affect behavior, group interaction, or anxiety level. In general, we don’t want to draw more attention to a disability than the Scout wants us to. The disability may not make a difference for the activity. Most Scouts don’t like to draw attention to themselves, but some are very open about their condition. If the Scout is open, it is alright for you to lean into that. But otherwise, try not to draw any extra attention.
You don’t want to turn one person’s regular, but difficult, life into the “game” for another person. If you decide to impair one person’s abilities for the purpose of the activity, avoid using the actual disability of anyone else in the group because that is disrespectful. You also don’t want to deprive the Scout with a disability from the experience of being shaken out the comfort zone. For example, if you are doling out impairments to most of the group, instead of using a blind Scout as the “blindfolded” Scout in the activity, give that Scout some other impairment, like not being able to talk or not being able to use one hand.
MAKE BELAYING AND SPOTTING ACCESSIBLE TOO
Belaying and spotting are part of the program experience. People instinctively want to protect a Scout with a disability and to protect people from the limitations of a Scout with a disability. Scout programs are fun, and challenge is part of what makes them fun. At the same time, there is a big sense of accomplishment from learning how to do activities safely and having real responsibility for others. In COPE and climbing, we need to make belaying and spotting accessible in every way they can be, not just the activity proper. Watch for examples of this in the following sections.
ENHANCED SPOTTING FOR LOW COPE ACTIVITIES
Your COPE training covered which aspects of an activity require spotters for all the participants. There are some times when you want to assign spotters when you don’t ordinarily need to, and other times when you need more spotters than usual. In this context, it doesn’t matter whether the participant has an actual disability or you assigned an impairment. The general principle here is to pay attention to how the limitation in ability affects the ability to stop or catch one’s own fall.
For example, think about a Scout who cannot see that is on a balance beam only 6 inches off the ground, but the ground underneath is not flat and smooth. Even though the height is minimal, not being able to see where to put your foot to catch yourself could result in an unnecessarily hard fall. So you will want to assign a spotter or two for that person when you would not need to otherwise.
Another type of Scout to consider is one with a strength or mobility limitation. The Scout may be strong enough and flexible enough to do the actual activity, but not quick enough, strong enough, or agile enough to catch him or herself if they get unstable. So it is a good idea to add spotters in order to limit how hard a fall could be.
PARTICIPANTS WITH REDUCED VISION
People that see “lose sight” of how tactile climbing, rappelling, and belaying are. The only ways unsighted climbing is any harder than sighted climbing is picking between different routes up a face, and knowing how far you are from the top or bottom. For rappelling, everyone has obstructed sightlines going over the top edge, or going over the edge of an overhang. So the difference by having vision is being more certain of where the true edge is rather than mistaking an uneven surface for an edge. All of these limitations are going to be handled by the belayer or instructor giving voice prompts. The biggest problem is not safety. It is keeping yourself from being so helpful with voice prompts that you take the challenge and fun out of the activity.
Belaying without vision is like fishing. You “read” the tension on a fishing line to know if a fish is biting and when to set the hook. A belayer can use the feel on the belay rope to sense when a climber is in trouble and needs to be locked off. With low vision, you can use the slide hand above the belay device to pull sideways on the belay rope, like drawing an archery bow. This leaves a controlled amount of functional slack for the climber while giving the belayer greater sensitivity to the climber’s motion. The belayer can also feel when there is too much slack in the belay line and draw it in. If the belayer or instructor is not comfortable with this approach, the belayer can be more assertive, pull all the slack through the belay device, and simply leave no distance to fall.
Spotting only requires one simple adaptation. The spotter needs to be able to touch the back of the boulderer. If the boulderer goes so high that a spotter can’t touch the back, they are too high anyway.
PARTICIPANTS WITH REDUCED HEARING OR COMMUNICATION
Whether or not you are hard of hearing, it is easier to understand someone if you can see their face. We all read facial expressions and lips to some extent without being trained to. Not all people who are hard of hearing can fully read lips, so they need to see facial expressions. If you have anyone in the group that is hard of hearing, everyone needs to make a point of facing toward each other so they can use their face and lip reading skills to understand better. People that are hard of hearing may bring their own technology to the activity. Most hearing aids and cochlear implants are now Bluetooth-enabled, so if you combine them with helmet-mounted earmuffs you can have a one-to-one communication link using a cell phone. Even without hearing aids, using headsets like mentioned in the Overview section can simplify hearing by getting down to just one voice to listen to.
The sports of climbing and COPE evolved using voice commands and voice responses as the normal way of doing business, so it seems like you have to be able to speak and hear to be safe. This isn’t really true. The climbing locations we use at Scout camps are pretty tame. Even where we are climbing or rappelling on natural rock, all the loose rock was knocked off long ago. Even though we will teach about falling objects, we are rarely concerned with that hazard in real life, and the other hazards don’t require instant communication.
The other things we need to communicate can be done with hand signals or rope tugs. Remember that at any point in a climb, the climber only needs three points of contact with the face, leaving one hand or foot free to signal with. A belayer can protect against a fall with one hand. The slide hand can be taken off the rope to signal with or it can be used to tug on the rope and get the attention of the climber/rappeller.
It would be a good thing, but there is no standardized set of signals to use with a participant that can’t speak or hear. In the real world, there are a lot of variations in the people we need to adapt for. For instance, a person that is hard of hearing, but not fully deaf, may not need as much adaptation. A person that is non-verbal (can’t form understandable words) may still be able to listen and to make noises to communicate with another person. The essential thing is that the people that need to communicate have a set of signals that they agree on and understand. You can invent anything you want that meets that requirement.
MOBILITY ACCESS TO THE CLIMBING AREA
It is rare for a camp to have a wheelchair accessible path all the way to the climbing area. Users of wheelchairs and crutches often need vehicle transportation from the central area of the camp to the climbing area. Local conditions, like the steepness of the terrain, vary too much to give specific advice, but it is worthwhile to think through in advance how the climbing/COPE staff will generally transport such a Scout from the last accessible point up to the climb. If the Scout must be physically carried, take guidance from the Scout, family member, or caregiver on the most comfortable and safe way to do so.
Wheelchairs and other mobility equipment need to be shaded or covered while the user is out of their equipment. Direct sun can make the surfaces hot enough to burn. This is particularly important because some people with physical disabilities also have nerve conditions where they cannot feel heat and/or pain and will not know they are being injured.
ADJUSTING FOR LIMITED STRENGTH, DEXTERITY, OR ENDURANCE
In this module, we assume you already know how to make adjustments in the placement of artificial holds on your climbing tower and know the difficulty levels of your rock routes so you can give a participant an appropriate challenge, so we are not repeating those details here. You may have participants or caregivers asking for “accommodations” to participate in your activity. If you aren’t used to the term, an accommodation is just a change in either the equipment or the process to make it possible for them to take part.
Many of the techniques you learned for helping out a physically “stuck” participant, like a “vector lift” and taking a climber’s full weight on belay to allow the climber to rest for a bit, can be used for participants with disabilities. The techniques for making rescues can be applied in a planned manner to adjust for a participant with limited strength, dexterity, or endurance. Sometimes you will be able to tell from looking at them that participants need an accommodation. Sometimes you won’t. The starting point is a quick and frank conversation to talk about the nature of the disability and to sort out how to make the activity work. You listen to the people with a disability because they have been compensating for themselves longer than you have, and they are experts on their own bodies. You also use your own creativity and expertise because you know your equipment, facility, and resources.
Ideally, your staff will have practiced making changes to rigging and will have rescue rigging already thought out. When surprises happen, try to make the adjustments quickly so no one has to go away. But realistically it might take too much time from the rest of the program to drop everything and re-rig program elements right when the request is made. Sometimes you also need more than a moment to think through and address the safety aspects. If you can’t make a change right then, make an appointment with the participant for another time, to give you time to make the adjustments during a program break.
Counterweighted Climbing – Attaching a counterweight to a climber reduces the amount of effort the climber needs to use, while leaving the climber in control of the climb. The counterweight is typically between 30% and 70% of the climber’s weight. The exact number should be low enough that the effort is still challenging and high enough that the climb is doable.
The counterweight needs to have the same range of travel that the climber does, so there is not a clever way to use a pulley system to get away with a lighter counterweight. The rigging has to be 1 to 1. The counterweight system is not part of the belay system for the climber and the two systems need to attach to the climber independently of each other.
The counterweight needs to be able to descend freely. With a hollow climbing tower it can descend through the center of the tower. For other types of towers, or for natural rock climbing, the counterweight needs to have its own guide rope (imagine a really steep zipline) to descend. This allows the weight to move vertically without dragging on the tower or rock surface, or getting caught on a ledge or overhang. It should be obvious, but no one should be allowed to linger in the line of fall of the counterweight or under the guide rope.
You also need a haul system to get the counterweight to the top elevation before tying it to the first climber. After that, you have the option of raising the weight back up by allowing the climber to descend while still connected to the counterweight and under the control of a belayer or auto-belay device. You will need a way to hold the counterweight at the top while you untie one climber and shift to another. This rigging system needs to be able to hold the counterweight “hands free” when needed and also have an easy way to free it to move when the participant starts climbing.
Using Haul Systems to Raise or Lower a Participant – A participant may not be able to reach the high COPE elements or a rappelling platform using stairs or ladders. The typical solution is a using a haul system (usually a rope and pulley system) to raise the person to the high element and to lower them down when they are finished. If the participant has great upper body strength compared to body weight, all you may need is a single rope and a set of ascenders. Before you automatically assume that someone else will have to haul the participants to the top, think about whether they might be do it themselves if they had just had enough mechanical advantage. A self-haul system needs a progress capture device within the system. A pulley system can be easily rigged for anything between 1 to 1 and 4 to 1 mechanical advantage.
It isn’t obvious, but it can be easier to operate the pulley system with the stationary pulleys tied to an anchor at ground level rather than at the top of the apparatus. Then, all that is needed between the haul system and the climber is a single rope with a single carabiner or free-running pulley at the top. It also creates space between the participant and the moving parts of the haul system. Depending on the geometry of the tower or climbing area, a haul system may be a simpler alternative to a counterweighted climbing rig.
Typically you will use the safety cable/anchor point of the event itself as the anchor point for the haul system. Alongside the haul system, place a belay system for the lift/lower. As always, the climber is also tied to a belay system independent of the haul system.
Alternatives to Harnesses – A standard harness at the waist and hips is rarely sufficient for people that cannot control their legs, have no waist, or are top-heavy for some reason. If they have strength and control over the torso, you can add a chest harness to go with the waist/hip harness to keep them upright. Otherwise, you can use a sling seat/bosun’s chair to raise and belay the person because it provides support for both the torso and the legs.
Wheelchair Users and Transfers – With wheelchair users, you are modifying the experience so it is an arms-only experience. That means you can temporarily move foot ropes and “trapeze” footholds from the rigging to create access to the arms part of the element.
Most of the time you will be making some kind of “transfer”, where you lift the person out of the chair and into a sling seat/bosun’s chair or special harness. If you need to lift a person with a disability, take a moment to ask for directions from them or their caregiver. They usually know the best ways to lift them from experience.
You can also think about whether is it safer to leave the person in their wheel chair and lift them, chair and all, up to the high element. While the chair may have extra cushions and supports that are necessary for the user, there are questions to consider because the chair could be damaged in the process. If that happens, the participant may have to leave camp. Wheel chairs are not made to support loads in a lifting direction so you have to look at whether the chair has sturdy points to tie your rigging onto, whether it will fold up if you pull up on it, and whether it has belts built into it to secure the person to the chair.
Abrasion Protection – Climbing and rappelling can both be done as arms-only activities, but the person has to be protected from abrasion from dragging against the climbing face. Chainsaw chaps hold up well for leg protection and long Kevlar™ forearm guards can protect arms and elbows. If you need to protect the person’s face, a different style of helmet may work better, like a batting helmet that has a facemask.
For rappelling, a more sophisticated approach is to add a rolling standoff to the climbing harness. This allows the wheels to roll along the face while holding the body out from the surface. The standoff looks like the rear axle of a tricycle with two rolling wheels on a common axle. The axle is longer than the shoulder width of the participant and it is secured to the climber across the front of the hips. A canoe dolly can be adapted for this task.
SUGGESTED EQUIPMENT LIST
For safety reasons, it is a good idea to purchase commercially available equipment when it is available rather than using something homemade. This list isn’t intended to limit your creativity or prevent you from providing equipment with additional capability. This list is in addition to gear regularly needed to run the activity.
Weights for a counterweight system and means to attach them to climbing ropes. You need up to 200 pounds in total and the ability to easily change the total weight. Weightlifting plates or sand bags will work.
Chest Harnesses in a range of sizes
Helmet-compatible radio headsets
Chainsaw chaps, Kevlar forearm guards, batting helmet for abrasion protection
Free-running pulleys for climbing rope – These are used for rigging counterweight and hauling systems. In total you need to have at least two double-sheave pulley blocks, and four single-sheave pulley blocks. Note that stacking two single-sheave pulley blocks side by side is not a workable substitute for a double-sheave pulley block. (The rope will constantly tangle up with itself.) If the double-sheave pulley blocks have anchor points on both top and bottom, you have a lot of versatility to rig anything between 2 to 1 and 4 to 1 mechanical advantage.
Long Rope – To allow for a 4 to 1 hauling system, you need at least one rope in the kit that is 4-1/2 times longer than your highest anchoring point is above the ground.
Sling Seat & Spreader Bar or Bosun’s Seat
Authors – John Winter, Todd Whitely, Chris Werhane
Editor – Roger B. Tate
Reviewed by – Chris Moon and Jim Ganley, BSA COPE and Climbing Committee
Last Revised 9/14/2023
[1] Both of these are forms of ableism. Unlike most other forms of discrimination, ableism can happen with good intentions or bad intentions.
Able Scouts 