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.
We have reached the maximum number of participants for the camp planned in August 2021.
But stay tuned for future opportunities!
LATEST UPDATES: We plan to organize future HABIT-ILE camps between the end of 2021 and 2022.
Are you interested in the project and would you like to participate?
Send an email to pisasmilelab@fsm.unipi.it, we will save your name and we will contact you as soon as we can give you more precise information.
Contact: Gessica Tealdi gtealdi@fsm.unipi.it
Julie Paradis jparadis@fsm.unipi.it
Andrea Guzzetta aguzzetta@fsm.unipi.it
Click on the images to view videos from the early HABIT-ILE camps
recently completed in France and in Italy
