United Spinal Association has developed a comprehensive air travel guide for wheelchair users or anyone with mobility issues to assist with everything from traveling with your wheelchair to what to do if things break.
This presentation from the 2023 AACPDM Community Forum presents and overview and a model creating opportunities for employment for individuals with disabilities.
Setting up a comfortable home office is key to optimizing work/life balance.
If you or your child have cerebral palsy where the cause is unclear, there are no-cost genetic tests and no-cost genetic counseling that can help answer some of these questions.
This study tested the safety and effectiveness of a neuroscience-based, multi-component intervention designed to improve motor skills and sensory processing of the more-affected arm and hand in infants with CP where one side is more impacted than the other (asymmetric CP).
Speech impairments like dysarthria are common in children with cerebral palsy (CP) which can greatly affect participation across environments. Our study examined how speech impairment severity changes over time in 101 children with CP at 4, 6, 8, and 10 years of age.
When a person is looking for a way to communicate in alternative ways, they need to find something that really works for them. They need to try to find a voice that sounds natural. They want to try to find a way to be efficient. They want to be able to communicate as normally as possible, even though they're not using their biological voice.
Dr. Nathalie Maitre discusses the CPF Early Detection and Intervention Network and helps us to understand how babies learn, how CP impacts the developing brain, and early intervention strategies that can help.
Dysarthria is a motor speech disorder that affects how clear and understandable a person’s speech is. Between 50-90% of people with CP have dysarthria.
Welcome to the second part of my travel series! In the previous post, I wrote about how I found my love for traveling through my trip to Madrid and Paris. Looking back, not only do I realize that these trips took place during very different phases of my adult life, but they also mark the different phases of my CP in recent years. Although CP is the result of a non-progressive brain injury, many folks experience a decline in their physical abilities in their adult years — the inevitable effect of aging, not just for those with disabilities, but for everyone.
In the next couple of blog posts, I’ll write about some of my favorite trips that I took over the years. I’ll travel down memory lane of all the new places I explored in recent years and eagerly wait until my next trip.
My cousin, Reeva, had recently moved to Kyoto, Japan to learn Japanese for a year, and she convinced me to visit her there. I didn’t know anyone else living in Japan and Reeva was going to be there short term, so I couldn’t possibly pass up going! I was admittedly pretty nervous about traveling all the way across the world— a 24-hour long plane trip, including a layover— especially to a country that uses a language that isn’t remotely like anything I was used to. But, again, I wasn’t going to miss this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
CPF Executive Director Rachel Byrne and Christina Smallwood talk about parenting, raising a child with cerebral palsy and helping her learn to advocate for herself.
This study highlights caregiver knowledge and preferences to understanding the GMFCS and how that information should be relayed from clinicians.
The GMFCS, MACS and CFCS are all tools used by therapists and researchers to help classify the functional capabilities of individuals with CP. This research article provides evidence of their stability over time.
The GMFCS can be a helpful tool in clinical and research use and has been shown to be stable and accurate over time. It can also help individuals and families better understand cerebral palsy.
CPF Executive Director Rachel Byrne and Dr. Mary Lauren Neel, MD discuss Life after the NICU.
Individuals with disabilities have opportunities to work, receive employment training and coaching, benefits counseling and save money without losing means tested benefits. This podcast discusses these options.
CPF Executive Director Rachel Byrne and speech therapist, Kristen Allison, PhD, CCC-SLP discuss communication and Cerebral Palsy.
Vocational Rehabilitation (VR), operated by the Department of Education, can be utilized for their many tools to aid those with disabilities in the preparation for the job search, finding gainful employment, and maintaining this employment.
As cities and states across the countries are lifting the COVID-19 lockdown orders, people are returning to work at their offices. However, since the virus is still very much going around, employers must be vigilant about keeping their workplaces as safe as possible. Although we might be seeing a sense of “normalcy,” there’s still a long way to go before reaching the pre-pandemic normalcy—if we
Neuroplasticity is the ability that the brain has to form new connections between different cells or between different areas of the brain.
We all have different towns and we all have different things that we do in the course of the day. It may be that the student is a great artist or a great writer. When it comes to assistive technology we have to think about what is going to give that student the ability to do what they love without having to see roadblocks and go, "I can't do that”. There are so many tools out there, whether it's a communication app, a video app, a math tool. With assistive technology you are not making the student into what you want them to be.
When you use alternate means of communication it can be really frustrating to go out in community. It is hard to know whether people are understanding you and whether they will take the time to listen. A lot of times it's hard for people to admit that they're not always comfortable with a device or a wheelchair or person who does things differently. So the more we can expose and educate people the better off we all will be. When we talk about acceptance, we're not just talking about people in society accepting people with disabilities. We're also talking about people with disabilities who are using alternate means of communication and how difficult it is for them to be out in the community.