As many of my friends already know, my family and I have been seriously looking into an alternative therapy for Hailey. Unfortunately we have decided to wait until next summer. Although I believe we should begin this therapy as soon as possible. Hailey just has too much going on this year. She will begin school in June (a tremendous transition for her from her current Early Intervention Program) and we are now beginning to train on a communication device for Hailey (A blog for another week) Conductive education is an intensive, multi-disciplinary approach to education, training and development for individuals with cerebral palsy. It is generally a five week program and it is not covered by insurance. We have enough savings for the first session but eventually we may need to look into having some kind of fund raiser for repeated therapies as it usually takes more than one session. Because there isn't a facility in Boston we had to look out of state for this and we have looked into three different locations. (For my fellow blogger parents of children with CP and spina bifida) I believe that this therapy may be one of the determining factors of whether or not Hailey walks. If she doesn't walk that's o.k. but we as a family have to know that we have exhausted all avenues. The first facility that we looked into was located in Winter Park Florida. I thought this would not be bad, I actually have a home in Florida and the kids would have somewhere to stay for 5 weeks, great that would save some money on expenses. After researching the next two facilities the one in Florida began to look a bit inferier. So we looked into one in Pincton Ontario. Although this was the most expensive of the three, somewhere in the ballpark of $9000.00 for the five week program that they recommended. I actually liked this one alot and you can actually live there in the facility for 5 weeks. Not too bad. This one to me looked pretty darn good. Then we looked at the one in Grand Rapids Michigan, this was half the price and seemed to have a program equivilant to the one in Canada. If you go to their facility you can also stay at the Ronald Macdonald House and a shuttle will bring you back and forth to the CE facility. In our opinion This is the one that looked to be the best program for Hailey. We now have a year to continue to explore and raise money before we make a definitive decision. In The mean time we will start to take our cue from Conductive Education Therapy and attempt to make some of the furniture that they use in their programs. If any one has any information on CE please post a comment. Also, March is Cerebral Palsy Awareness Month and I hope that all of my family and friends will be wearing green ribbons to show your support and love for Hailey and other children with her same disability. If you need to know where to get one I hope to be putting a list of locations up on my blog as well as on facebook in the next few days. if anyone who knows of a business that would let me put a jar of ribbons on their counter please let me know. Thanks, looking forward to hearing from you all soon. :o)
http://massagermommy.blogspot.com/2010/03/conductive-education.html
ReplyDeleteThis is my latest posting about CE. We LOVE CE and believe it does amazing things for these kiddos. The thing about CE is it is more than a therapy it is a way of life for these kids. They expect them to do things that we don't even think about teaching them. We have started doing a lot of what they teach in the home and it is going really well.
We go to a center in Loveland, CO. It is a newer center so they don't have the "camps" available all of the time.
ReplyDeleteWe started with just once a week and for financial reasons we only go once a month now. I try and do as much as I can in our home at least once a week.
Thank you for following our blogs.
Renee and Janet,
ReplyDeleteI have been following Renee's blog and I discovered Janet's when she mentioned Conductive Education and google alerted me.
Renee is right, Conductive Education is not something that takes place in a five week block as Janet has been informed. It is a way of life. I prefer to call it Conductive Upbringing as it is called in Hungarian. Conductive pedagogy being the pedagogy used to implement it by conductors.
Renee, I also think that when funds are scarce and provision is also scarce, or far away, that sessions once a week or even once a month can be better than a five week block every year or so. The benefits of the once a week session are probably more for the parents who will learn how to live conductively with their children. They can pick up tips and tricks to use at home until the next meeting in a conductive group.
Keep on teaching your children how to do whatever it is they are interested in learning and keep on teaching them how to be interested in learning even more! In the sessions ask for advice from the conductors on how best to do this.
You may like to take a look at my blog. Sometimes I write about my work with the little ones.
Susie Mallett
Conductor
www.susie-mallett.org