Rehabilitation program provides help for children with cerebral palsy

The Zero-G Gait and Balance Training System is a new program to provide rehabilitation opportunities for those with disabilities, especially children with cerebral palsy and other Neuromotor disorders.

Valerie Pieraccini, Director of Therapy and Early Learning, and Nicole Anderson, a parent whose daughter uses the program, speak more about the program.

“Cerebral palsy is the most common motor disorder amongst children. There’s many causes of it, but usually it’s related to either an injury to the brain in utero or up to the age of one. It also can be an abnormality which is the complexity of the diagnosis because there are many different types of cerebral palsy,” Pieraccini said.

The training system was a vision that was designed to help children with cerebral palsy and genetic disorders.

“It is a robotic gait trainer that we have at our gym up in our north campus, and what it does is we harness the children up and the robot is actually able to monitor and facilitate movement of the child’s movement,” Pieraccini said.

Pieraccini sees success stories every day with the Zero-G Gait machine.

“We’re seeing children that are able to walk holding their parents’ hands and previously that wasn’t something they could do,” Pieraccini said.

“Before a system like this, you had to rely just on a typical gait trainer, so no suspension, nothing. It was up to the child to support their body weight holding the armrest of the gait trainer and propelling their body,” Anderson said.

With this system, Anderson’s daughter, Alexandra, can finally feel safe and safe while learning how to walk.

“This provides a very safe opportunity for her to learn how to walk,” Anderson said. “And at the same time, she’s there every day of the week learning to speak, learning to pick up objects, I mean UCP has provided so many things for her in addition to learning to find her legs.”