Conductive Education
FREE Conductive Education
Megan Baker House offers free Conductive Education sessions to children and adults with motor disorders including Cerebral Palsy, Head Injury, Stroke, Developmental Co-ordination Delay and Parksinon's disease.
Megan Baker House provides a range of sessions delivered by trained professionals called Conductors.
Megan Baker House also provides support to families and carers through advice and information, referrals, befriending and mentoring.
What is Conductive Education
Children and adults with a neurological motor disorder have damage to the central nervous system, which affects their ability to control movement and can cause a wide range of developmental difficulties. Skills such as head control, moving around independently, sitting unaided, walking, dressing, eating and drinking, personal hygiene and social and communication skills that are ‘automatic’ for most people have to be consciously learnt.
Conductive Education is a proven, practical and successful approach which provides coping mechanisms and techniques to allow children and adults to learn to manage the difficulties caused by their disability. The impact the method has on their lives and the lives of their families is more than a physical one; it also helps to increase their confidence and motivation, helping to develop their personality, feel more positive about their future and their ability to lead independent, fulfilled lives.
The skills learnt have practical applications which will help them to live more independently at home, school/work. For babies, this can mean learning to control their head movements so they can see what's around them; for toddlers, simple self care needs such as eating and dressing themselves; for older children, mastering the grip of a pencil to write their names. Teenagers might be looking for skills to help them cope when they leave home to go to college, university or to pursue a career. Adults to improve their balance to be able to carry on with their day to day chores.
Conductive Education teaches how to learn to solve problems when faced with them. It is a holistic, movement based educational approach for children and adults who have neurological motor difficulties. It is not a treatment, therapy or cure.
Therefore Conductive Education’s ultimate goal is to create an independent personality, someone who can think for themselves and adapt their learnt skills to any situation, which may arise.
Megan Baker House provides a range of age appropriate structured Conductive Education sessions and activities run by Conductors who work closely with each individual to teach and enable a personally tailored strategy for living.
History of Conductive Education
The originator of Conductive Education, András Peto was born in Hungary. Peto was a physician and worked in Austria between the two World Wars. During the Second World War, Peto returned to Budapest where he hid in the basement of a friend's house. Whilst staying there he spent most of his time working and playing with his friend's child who had Cerebral Palsy. After the war ended, he devoted his time to train staff to work with children with Cerebral Palsy in 'The Institute for the Motor Impaired'. Peto revolutionised a system for teaching individuals who have motor disorders - Conductive Education.
How does a Conductive Education session work?
Conductive Education is carried out in small groups and it is run by Conductors. Different programmes in the sessions make up each group’s daily routine. This is specially designed to suit the individuals in that specific group. All the programmes are built on each other, using the learnt skills and implementing them in different positions. The tasks within each task series are built on each other too, starting from more simple movements to building up into more difficult and complex tasks. All of these tasks are designed to help with the difficulties caused by the condition.
Who can deliver Conductive Education sessions?
A conductor is a highly skilled professional who delivers Conductive Education. In order to be able to do this, they must have intensive training lasting 3-4 years to gain Qualified Conductor Status. This status is gained after a three or four year degree course, either in Hungary, Birmingham (UK), Keele (UK), America, Israel or Spain.
What are the aims of Conductive Education?
Peto argued that instead of motor disordered children receiving special therapies, they could improve through the normal process of learning and practicing. Peto was the first to consider disability as an educational challenge and not as a medical problem.
Conductive Education is therefore not a therapy or set of exercises but an educational system, of which the individual is an active participant.
Some of the general conductive aims are to teach ways and techniques to overcome the difficulties caused by their condition; to promote active participation and independence; to improve confidence and self esteem.
Continuation
It is very important that the expectation and encouragement instilled in sessions continues at home and at school, the participant will make much quicker progress this way and will learn to want to do things for themselves. It may take longer, but the more times they have chance to practice, the quicker they can become.
