practice - continuation

After short break, we started our practice again.
In the second week I observed work of physiotherapists in deparment B in Fjordskolen in Aabenraa.

This part of school is for children with multiple handicaps. Most of them is sitting in wheel chairs and need a lot of care with personal hygiene or eating. Some of them have to be fed trough a stomach tube.

The main diagnosis in department B are:

• spasticity
• muscle contractions
• lopsided back

The main tasks of physitherapists are:
training of stability, mobility, balance, strenght, body awareness;
gain the children ability of sitting, standing, walking or getting from one position to another.


The third week I spent with physiotherapeutist Gitte ang Ulla in Department A. This part of school has students with pervasive developmental disorders (PDD), with Autism, Aspergers Syndrom.

PDD:
children with this desease have problems with social communication, social imagination in playing and in flexible thinking.

Asperger's Disorder:

• lucid speech before the age of 4 years of age
• communication is sometimes repetative
• voice tends to be flat, emotionless
• can be obsessed with coplex topics - pattern, weather, music, numbers, cars
• IQ's: many are above normal range in verbal ability and below average in performance range
• lack of common sense
• movement tend to be clumsy
• sensory probles appear not to be as dramatic as in other forms of autism
• socially aware but display inappropriate reciprocal interactions
• often seen as depression, anxiety
• in adulthood many lead productive lives; living indepently, working effectivly in a job and raising a family
  

Autism:
For this children the most important thing is to use an individual programme. Therapists should use visual, concrete materials and practice skills in real situations. They should learn how to solve conflicts. The day at school have to be predictable and understandable by using scheduls for the day, lessons, rules should be written.
Every student has his own seat, table to work, place to relax, his own materials and individual schedule: what to do, how long, with whom, where, what's next. They have to know what to do during the break and the day at school can't be stresful.