This document, approved by the Rehabilitation Engineering & Assistive Technology Society of North America (RESNA) Board of Directors in March 2007, shares typical clinical applications and provides evidence from the literature supporting the use of power wheelchairs for children.
This paper serves as an update to the previous RESNA Position on the Application of Power Wheelchairs for Pediatric Users with more current and additional scientific literature. This document contains typical clinical applications and best evidence from the literature supporting the application of power mobility (PM) for young children and to assist practitioners in decision-making and justification. It is RESNA' s position that age, limited vision or cognition, behavioral issues, and the ability to walk or propel a manual wheelchair short distances should not, in and of themselves, be used as discriminatory factors against providing PM for children. RESNA recommends early utilization of PM for children with mobility limitations as medically necessary, to promote integration and psycho-social development, reduce passive dependency, and to enhance participation, function, and independence.
Mobility is a human right. The traditional definition of mobility in physical therapy practice is centered on translocation and, while accurate, is not comprehensive. In this article, we propose the ON Time Mobility framework: that all children have the right to be mobile throughout their development to explore, engage in relationships, and develop agency to cocreate their lives. This perspective highlights interconnected principles of timing, urgency, multimodal, frequency, and sociability to begin discussions on supporting the right to hours of active mobility each day for all children. We propose critical evaluation and discussion of these principles followed by a call to action to shift our conceptualization and enactment of mobility. This mobility rights perspective challenges current medical systems, industry, and government to collaborate with children with disabilities, their families and communities to support mobility as a source of physical and social interactions that define and develop individuals (see Supplemental Digital Content 1, the Video Abstract, available at: http://links.lww.com/PPT/A398).
Purpose:
The purpose of this study was to determine the feasibility of infants with Down syndrome to use a modified ride-on car with seated and standing modes.
Methods:
Participants included 4 infants with Down syndrome. Families were asked to provide at least 8 minutes of modified ride-on car driving per day, at least 5 times per week throughout the 9-month intervention.
Results and Conclusions:
Families demonstrated a variety of adherence rates to the intervention. Infants demonstrated independent activation of the modified ride-on car in seated and standing modes and enjoyed driving. The modified ride-on car intervention was feasible and warrants further testing to address barriers that influence adherence to the intervention.
The modification of posture in children using sEMG is a new area that offers much potential to aid disabled children regain function. This article describes a new protocol, the "minimax" procedure, to aid children regain motor function in sitting. The protocol uses selective reinforcement to encourage recruiting/relaxing target sites (gluteus medius/maximus) in a predetermined way so as to encourage good form in sitting. Children often are unaware how to make changes in posture, and when they do succeed the progress is so slow that sustaining motivation is a challenge. This paper describes a procedure that helps the child recognize when they have achieved the correct posture, immediately rewards them for doing so, and generates data using Boolean operations to numerically substantiate the clinically observed changes in posture.
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