HELENA — East Helena Boy Scouts partnered with Intermountain to upgrade equipment, allowing the facility’s therapists to provide better care.
Pictured above you see East Helena Boy Scouts spending hours putting together a swing set. Mayes Mitchell is the scout in charge of the project and had to utilize his surrounding resources to complete the build
"It was actually a very technical build,” says Mitchell, a Troop 212 Life Scout. “We had to drill holes precisely. We had my grandfather come up and help cut all the wood and drill everything. It took a couple days but it was worth it."
It’s worth it because this isn’t just any swing, this is a therapeutic gym set and is designed for Intermountain to provide better quality therapy sessions.
“I think this is gonna be like the most popular spot,” laughs Intermountain Occupational Therapist, Jerilyn Lecce as she sees the completed set. “I think it's gonna be a jaw-dropping experience for our kiddos when they come in to see this and that there's so much more that we can do with this piece of equipment that we were not able to do with our previous swing."
Lecce says the previous swing set was only good for up to 5-year-olds and did not have good stability for typical therapeutic movements. For example, the old swing set only had two hooks for certain equipment. Mitchell and the boy scouts built a set that has seven hooks for a full therapeutic experience.
"We have a lot of patients that have histories of trauma and abuse and some of the ways that we can use the swing for them is for calming. When we use a movement input in certain ways, we can influence the way that our body feels."
The Boy Scouts built two therapeutic swing sets for Intermountain and feel proud to meet a demand within our community.
