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Teaching Children to Walk:
A Practical Approach to Supported Ambulation

Pediatric clinicians have been using support walkers (aka gait trainers) to teach children with minimal to severe gross motor dysfunction the skill of stepping for many years. Within the last 5 years an increasing number of peer reviewed journal articles have supported and provided evidence of the effectiveness of body weight supported gait therapies (BWS-GT). This course will explore which gait treatment strategies are supported by the literature, & how to maximize outcomes using equipment in combination with a treadmill, manual guidance (facilitation) and/or over ground strategies. This course will assist clinicians in evaluation skills to identify appropriate patients for this intervention as well design appropriate protocols. The clinician will gain an understanding of how to combine various treatment strategies & programs with BWS gait training including compression garments (Benik, Spio, Upsuit, Theratogs), and comprehensive programs (MOVE, Conductive Education, Euromed/ Europeds/Adli, NDT).

Clinicians will review & discuss cases which combine BWS-GT with functional context-specific over ground training using support walkers (aka gait trainers), and will learn the features of many gait trainers on the market and how to select which features might benefit their patients. Clinicians will see patient treatment sessions in a supported ambulation environment. Most of the cases are aged 0-5 and have diagnoses incl. Down Syndrome, extreme prematurity, cerebral palsy, spina bifida, 25% gross motor delay (without any diagnosis), Angleman and CHARGE Syndome, and others.

      

800.332.WALK  •  education@litegait.com