What is Bobath Therapy?
Bobath therapy is made up of three disciplines, proportioned to suit each individual child. The disciplines are:
Uses specific handling techniques to help children to relax and mobilise their muscles and joints. This improves the children's quality of posture and movement, enabling them to move more freely to be more stable and comfortable. It is only when a child can achieve a safe and supported position that they are ready to learn to interact with their environment.
Aims to maximise the child's potential for independence with daily activities and will frequently use play and exploration to develop and learn many skills.
Cerebral palsy can sometimes affect a child's perceptual and sensory ability and their judgement of spaces and distances. Occupational therapy seeks to help overcome this through using carefully graded activities so that they can move and use their eyes and hands more effectively to dress, eat, read, write and play with friends.
Speech & Language Therapy
Deals not only with communication and speech, but with all aspects of oral movement. Difficulties in co-ordinating the muscles necessary for speaking mean that children may also experience problems eating and drinking.
A child can employ many methods to communicate. By using their eyes and hands, or pictures and symbols, or even computers and voice output communication aids, a child with cerebral palsy can interact with others.
Bobath therapy combines these disciplines to give each child the skills to explore the world, communicate their needs and participate as much as possible, not just in therapy sessions, but in all aspects of their lives.
Bobath therapy is an interdisciplinary approach to the management of cerebral palsy involving occupational therapy, physiotherapy and speech and language therapy. The basis of the approach is to give children an experience of normal movement by enabling the child to respond actively to specialised handling.
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