A hand for Hope ✋

Hi! As some of you may know, my daughter, Hope, had a stroke in pregnancy, and as a result has hemiplegic cerebral palsy, which means that she can’t use her right side limbs properly, and that she can’t use her hand at all.

Hope experienced a delay in diagnosis and treatment due to our GP insisting that her non-use of her hand and arm was “normal”, meaning that she didn’t start any treatment until 9 months of age, and didn’t receive a diagnosis until she was 14 months. Hope is now almost 2 and still cannot open her hand from a fist.

CIMT (Constraint Induced Movement Therapy) is a physiotherapy technique used to improve a person’s upper limb function following neurological damage, such as a stroke. During CIMT, the unaffected “good” arm is put in a cast for a few weeks, and the child engages in an intensive therapy program, usually attending clinic for 3 hours per day for 3 weeks, to promote the development of fine motor movement in the affected “bad” hand.

Hope gets really frustrated by the lack of use that she has of her “bad” hand, so we know that CIMT would be absolutely life changing for her.

Unfortunately, this therapy is costly, and there are no CIMT programs local to us, so the funds will help to facilitate not only the program, but accommodation for our family, while Hope undergoes the treatment, as the closest clinic is a 5 hour drive from our home. ✋

Thank you!