A recent study of 894 children ranging from 2 to 11 years of age who have Cerebral Palsy supports the use of constraint-induced movement therapy, or CIMT, as an effective short-term intervention for the improvement of upper-limb function. The children participated in a 5-day per week intervention program over a 2 to 3-week period. The same study, though, did caution about the long-term effectiveness of the treatment, suggesting that CIMT could not be maintained over time.
CIMT is a treatment intervention that forces the use of the affected side of the body while...
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Alexus “Lex” Lasiter, 7, loves horses and receiving mail. So much so that her mother Wathena Sievert, on a whim, asked Travis Barker, a Florida artist that contributes to an online artifact website, if she could contract him to draw a picture of a horse to cheer her daughter on. Travis not only offered to create a picture for free (and mail it to Lex), but he opened a Facebook page, Horses for Lex, to invite other artists to follow suit.
It wasn’t long before the little girl – who has Cerebral Palsy, autism, seizures, heart trouble and a kidney condition – would...
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National PLAY-DOH Day is here again. Celebrated annually across the globe since 2006, this yearly event is a perfect excuse to use our imaginations (not to mention our fine motor and sensory skills). The holiday that continues to captivate the imagination and spur creations is not only fun, but functional.
Did you know that PLAY-DOH was originally a wallpaper cleaner invented in the 1930s by Noah McVicker for Krogers Grocery? The grocery store was seeking a way in which to help clients clean coal residue from the walls. Back then, coal was the primary heating...
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Are you taking advantage of the Home and Community-Based waiver, or HCBS, initiative? Should you? TASH, an international leader in disability advocacy and inclusive communities, is offering a webinar series to assist interested individuals in understanding the HCBS waiver program. The webinar consists of seven, one-hour webinar sessions scheduled between September 30 to November 18.
What is the HCBS waiver program?
On January 10, 2014, The Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services, or CMS, issued a “Final Rule Medicaid HCBS,” a publication to explain...
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Twenty-one percent of children in the U.S. are not receiving routine developmental screens, and millions are not receiving key clinical preventive services, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report released this week. Not only does this contradict the goals of the new Affordable Care Act, or ACA, but it may hamper a child’s ability to receive early interventions, according to the recommendations made in the American Academy of Pediatric’s “Motor Delays: Early Identification and Evaluation” report.
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Coffee lovers will attest, we go to Starbucks because that’s a place where it’s popular to order a coffee to meet our taste bud preference – upside down caramel macchiato grande and hold the whip, please! And, we go to Burger King, primarily because they advocate that we can have it our way, right away – mushroom and Swiss bacon WHOPPER® with cheese, please. But, where would we go if we were non-verbal and wanted to order from a picture menu – iced grande chai, please?
It is no secret that marketers spend heavily to deliver the needs of their customers while...
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The family of a 17-year-old Oakland Unified School District student who happens to have Cerebral Palsy and uses a wheelchair for transportation is seeking justice after their son was allegedly struck several times and was injured when thrown out of his wheelchair by the school security officer – most of which was caught on videotape.
The family claims the abuse started on Monday, May 19, at 9 a.m. in the elevator and continued as the security officer handcuffed the student and pushed him down the hallway.
The security guard was trying to clear the hallway...
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Go Baby Go! It was a chance trip to Toys R Us where Cole Galloway had an epiphany that refocused his attention from babies driving robotic cars to babies driving racecars, he dubs his new project Go Baby Go! Galloway is a physical therapy professor who is on a mission to provide children with cognitive and physical disabilities with greater mobility during their early childhood development. He was disenfranchised by his earlier efforts to create a child-operated robotic solution that could close the exploration gap between children with impairment and those without....
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The “legendary” Rick Hohn retires. Hohn, 67 with severe Cerebral Palsy, retired as senior consumer representative after 18 years with DynaVox, a large augmentative and alternative communication manufacturer. It was a chance meeting in the mid-1990′s that brought Rick Hohn and Tilden Bennett, the co-founder and past president of DynaVox together. Hohn, then in his 40s, was an accomplished artist with little use of his arms who used a head stylus to paint, manual alphabet board to communicate, and a wheelchair for mobility. They say Bennett and his colleagues, upon...
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Marcus, a ninth-grade student new to the Patriot High School’s Special Education program, was not impressed on his first day of high school when he was told after lunch to put on gloves and an apron to dig through trash, alongside other students with special needs.
“My kid should not be in the garbage can for your recycling,” said Carmen Wells, Marcus’ mother when Jurupa Unified School District officials confirmed the long-standing tradition of having special education students sift through trash cans to find and separate recycled items. According to Wells, her...
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