Early HABIT-ILE: Hand-arm bimanual intensive therapy including lower extremities
About the Study
What is it? Using games and functional activities, HABIT-ILE is an intensive training of bimanual activities, inferior limbs and/or postural control stimulation. Developed in 2011 at the Clinical University of Louvain (Belgium) under the direction of Prof. Yannick Bleyenheuft, HABIT-ILE proved its efficacy to improve motor function and autonomy for children aged 6-18 years old and has already demonstrated good results in a pilot study for children aged 1-4 years old.
This therapy is based on motor-skill learning theory, the same method that everybody use to learn how to drive or how to become an athlete: short-time intensive practice (50hours in 2 weeks), repetition of active movement and increase of difficulty in a playful context that motivate the child and focuses on functional activities that parent/child defined before the therapy.
Each child have the same therapist(s) with him/her during the entire therapy period.
The therapy is part of an european research protocol that aims to evaluate the effects of early HABIT-ILE for children aged 1 to 4 years old. The protocol includes therapy and evaluations of the child's motor, sensory, kinematic and neuroplastic variations.
For who? For children with cerebral palsy aged 1 to 4 years who have bilateral infantile cerebral palsy. How and when? The therapy will last for 2 weeks and will take place in August 2021 and the assessments during the year 2021. Every day, from Monday to Friday, children have 5 hours of therapy from 9.00 to 12.00 and from 14.30 to 16.30. The therapy takes place at the Stella Maris Foundation of Calambrone, in Pisa. It is a research protocol for which participation is completely free.
Contact: Gessica Tealdi gtealdi@fsm.unipi.it
Julie Paradis jparadis@fsm.unipi.it
Andrea Guzzetta
Click on the images to view videos from the early HABIT-ILE camps
recently completed in France and in Italy
