Cerebral Palsy: A Practical Guide for Rehabilitation Professionals

This book helps rehabilitators and caregivers understand the multifaceted needs of children with cerebral palsy or other neuromotor impairments in order to plan and implement an effective treatment regimen. Drawing on the authors’ extensive experience spanning several decades, it addresses the sensitive challenge of rehabilitation, which cannot and must not be confined by the rigid schemes of established schools. In particular, the book provides numerous practical suggestions, intended to guide the reader through correct clinical reasoning, setting goals and subsequent treatment. Furthermore, it includes chapters on evaluating and treating the upper limbs, feeding and communication problems, as well as on the care of soft tissues and the management of the visual difficulties in these children.

The book is a valuable resource for physiotherapists, occupational therapists, speech therapists and other caregivers.

Psiche Giannoni is a physiotherapist for the treatment of children and adult persons with neurological motor impairments. After two decades of clinical practice in the Italian national health service she founded and directed the ART Education and Rehabilitation Centre in Genoa. This first-hand experience on the strong link between education and treatment, as well as the participation in the activities of EBTA as Senior Bobath Instructor and Country Representative, allowed her to mature the conviction of the necessity to overcome the narrow borders of the many rehabilitation schools and explore the links with bioengineering approaches to assessment and quantitative analysis of treatment outcomes also using new technologies. For this reason she is now affiliated with the Department of Informatics, Bioengineering, Robotics and Systems Engineering, University of Genoa, in order to guide and support their research activity in rehabilitation engineering with the multiple and multifaceted aspects of designing the optimal treatment for the specific impaired person.

Liliana Zerbino is a physiotherapist who has worked, throughout her long career in the public and private sector, for the evaluation and treatment of children with neurological motor impairments, with a specific focus on the interaction with the family, aimed at the joint formulation and sharing of the step-by-step goals of the rehabilitation project. She is EBTA Senior Bobath Instructor and currently is teaching and training rehabilitators in various Italian public and private rehabilitation facilities.  In 1993 she was project coordinator of the ONG GVC Onlus, promoted by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the framework of Italy-Palestine Cooperation, for training health personnel and establishing new clinics/rehabilitation centres in the Jenin area of Palestine.  For many years, in cooperation with Psiche Giannoni, she has organized and taught courses, both at the basic and advanced level, at the ART Centre of Genoa and at present is a lecturer in Pediatric Physiotherapy at the Master course of the Florence University. She is co-author with Psiche Giannoni of the book Fuori Schema published by Springer.