(Back) Curtis Langley, Fundraising and Marketing Officer at The Movement Centre; Lizzie Baines from HSBC; Johnny Wilkes CEO at The Movement Centre
A Shropshire charity is set to invest £30,000 in new standing frames as part of its commitment to helping children with movement difficulties through a unique and life-changing therapy.
The Movement Centre, based in Oswestry, will be ordering 10 Leckey ‘Squiggles’ Standing Frames next month.
The investment has only been made possible through grants awarded by the National Lottery and HSBC, meaning it will be able to reduce the cost of treatment for families with children undergoing therapy on the programme.
A 12-month course of treatment would normally cost parents £3,950, however, this investment has enabled The Movement Centre to pass on the savings immediately to the families and the cost of the treatment is now £2,000.
The centre is giving children the chance to gain more control of their movement and reach their full potential through Targeted Training therapy, the only therapy of its kind in the world – with standing frames playing a vital role in the process.
Treatment has been helping to transform the range of movement of children with cerebral palsy and other disabilities affecting their mobility for more than 25 years. It helps children with movement such as gaining head control so that they can interact with those around them, sit unaided and can lead to gaining the ability to walk.
Sarah Bew, a physiotherapist at the centre based at the Robert Jones & Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital site but receives no NHS funding, said: “We have been hiring our existing standing frames on a monthly basis, so this is an important investment for The Movement Centre. It means we will not have to be hiring equipment all the time and it will also result in reducing the cost for families.
“We are able to provide the standing frames to families for the 12-month course of therapy and then, when we get them back, have them refurbished before passing them on for the benefit of more children – enabling us to bring the cost of the therapy down and making it more accessible to families.
“The Leckey frames are used by children aged between one and five. They support children higher up when we are working on head and trunk control, but we also use lower standing frames which target lower limbs.
“We still need to hire those for older children but have plans to buy some R82 Meerkat Standing Frames which will again prove to be another saving in ongoing hiring expenditure.
“The Leckey targets head control and has lots of built-in adjustments, breaking down the trunk into various segments for our Targeted Training therapy. It provides a snug fit which really secures the child, has a rocking base which challenges reactive control and has a tilt feature which can move it from the vertical to fully horizontal position.
“This makes transferring the child in and out a bit easier and doesn’t present so many manual handling issues.”
The Movement Centre does not receive any funding from Government or the NHS and is dependent on its extensive fundraising activities and the generosity of grants, awards and donations to continue its essential work.
“The therapy we provide really does make a life-changing difference to a child and their families,” said Sarah. “Even though therapy courses are subsidised by our charity, many families often need to fundraise themselves to fund the rest of the programme.”
The charity is always looking for fundraising support from people across the area including corporate organisations who could nominate the organisation as their charity of the year or simply host one event for the charity.
For more information about The Movement Centre, visit: www.the-movement-centre.co.uk, email: [email protected] or call 01691 404248.
