• In July we completed our 25th hand training camp, with more than 150 children participating since 2002. Ten children from as far away as Greece participated. We expanded our projects to include teenagers and children with other forms of CP. Our next camp will be a bimanual training (HABIT) and CIMT day camp for children age 6-17, June 23 - July 12, 2013. PARTICIPATION IS FREE BUT SPACE IS LIMITED! CONTACT US NOW.
• We have developed a NEW PROJECT for younger participants age 1.5 to 5 years whereby we train caregivers to provide these hand treatments in their own home. This project takes place throughout the year.  Contact us if you would like to be considered for any of these projects.
• Dr. Gordon was a keynote speaker at the International Cerebral Palsy Conference in Pisa, Italy in October. In July he had the distinct pleasure of presenting and meeting parents at the CHASA family retreat in Arlington Texas. He has agreed to serve as a "hand expert" and answer queries regarding hand function in CP. He was recently inducted as a fellow in the National Academy of Kinesiology.
• Marina Brandao, OT, successfully defended her PhD dissertation in May, 2012 at the Federal University, Belo Horizonte, Brazil. She has been intimately involved in our CP camps since 2007. Electra Petra, a former evaluator and camp supervisor, defended her dissertation in 2011. Congratulations to both!.
  
• We continue to collaborate on a project in Belgium involving a sleep-over HABIT camp, with the second camp held this summer. The camp expanded focus to include the lower extremity. Our camp supervisor, Marina Brandao, PhD, also conducted a camp in Belo Horizonte, Brazil in July. We also collaborated a group in Tel Aviv and London on  "Magic" theme-based HABIT camps.
  
• Finally, we have begun intensive speech treatments for children with CP. Please contact us if you are interested.
  

• Click here for a link to an article about our summer camps.

• In 2011 we published the report of a trial in Neurorehabilitation & Neurorepair comparing CIMT to bimanual training (HABIT). 42 children participated From July 2007 through July 2009. Thank you to all those who participated. We are excited to report that there was no consequence of providing intensive training without the use of physical upper extremity restraints--CIMT and bimanual training (HABIT) resulted in equal improvements in most clinical domains. However, in two other publications it was reported that HABIT may have an advantage in making progress on goals identified as important by children and caregivers (forthcoming), and in improving bimanual coordination determined in our state-of-the-art movement analysis lab.
  

• Dr. Kathleen Friel, who is leading our TMS plasticity project, received the 2012 Gayle Arnold Best Paper Award from the American Academy of Cerebral Palsy and Developmental Medicine. This is the second award to our group, with the first being in 2007 (pictured below) for a paper describing the initial development of HABIT.

Resources

For more information on Cerebral Palsy:

Children's Hemiplegia and Stroke Association (CHASA)
CHASA is a nonprofit family support organization devoted to providing assistance, information and counseling to families of children who have hemiplegia, hemiparesis, or childhood stroke.