Roc Wheels Rockit, User Manual

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14
Challenges in Pediatric Seating and Positioning
L
ack of Sustainable Resources: It can be extremely
difficult for a family to survive in a developing country
environment, even without having a child with disabilities. The
family often has to rely on their own resources and ingenuity
since outside support may be hard to find. Our goal is to provide
an opportunity for them to reach out to the community or other
organizations in order to improve their ability to function.
Parent's acceptance: By providing positioning and mobility systems
that addresses the parent's denial ( unacceptance ) of their child's medical needs
with a system that is both aesthetically pleasing and functional, ,and at the same
time, focusing on the child's medical needs by providing proper seating and posi-
tioning, leading to parental acceptance and participation.
Diagnosis may be difficult in the first year . With many congenital
and acquired disorders, proper diagnosis of the condition, is not always reliable
or feasible until age 2 or 3. This makes treatment a trial and error process until
an accurate diagnosis is ascertained.
Funding: In many cases, due to the difficulty of a proper diagnosis,
many funding agencies won't provide for proper special equipment until the time
the child is properly diagnosed. Agencies focus is on the bottom line and not the
child's medical needs at the early stages. Also, the level of education at the
funding agencies for the people approving funding, on the available products in
the markets, is sometimes 2 to 4 years behind.
Child's accelerated rate of growth : In many cases, some of these
kids, due to special diets or medical conditions, experience accelerated rates of
growth compared to children in their age groups. This complicates the problem
twofold, one by having to deal with funding for new equipment sooner than
expected, and a challenge for manufacturers to provide equipment that can
accommodate this growth.
Child may not be anatomically developed yet.
Activities of daily living issues:
The most basics are dealing with feeding,
sleeping schedules, peer or sibling interaction and transportation. We need to
keep in mind these issues when thinking of the right equipment, since the par-
ents of the child, the therapists and rehab personnel will be dealing with these
issues in a day-to-day basis.