Students with disabilities often need extra support throughout the day to access their environment, the academic materials, and learn alongside their peers. A Personal Care Attendant in the school setting is often utilized to support the students needs.

Children and teens with cerebral palsy and other disabilities may need the assistance of an individual who has a background in healthcare and the skills to provide the services essential to quality care.

An employment agreement spells out the rules, rights and responsibilities for both the Personal Care Attendant (the employee) and the individual with cerebral palsy or family who is hiring the Personal Care Attendant.

On this episode, I have the honor of talking with Wendy Pierce, MD, a pediatric physiatrist at Colorado Children's Hospital about physiatry, also known as Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. This fantastic field of medicine can be helpful for individuals with cerebral palsy across with lifespan, but it has a confusing name and sometimes a confusing job description. So we set out to help listeners better understand what a physiatrist does.

When I was considering going on birth control a few years ago, I wanted to find out how, if at all, my cerebral palsy would cause certain side effects. However, to my dismay, there weren’t any resources available that addressed the complexities a woman with cerebral palsy might encounter when going on any form of birth control.

There is insufficient research on adults living with cerebral palsy, (as referenced in my previous blog post on cerebral palsy and adulthood). Although there is a paucity of studies examining mental health in this population, medical researchers have speculated that the rate of depression is three to four times higher in people with disabilities such as CP than it is in the general population.