Dogs Can Increase Physical Activity in Disabled Children, Study Shows
Dogs Can Increase Physical Activity in Disabled Children, Study Shows
Plus: States divided on continuing paid family caregiver programs and innovative Texas school fills gap in early childhood programs for disabled tots
Medical Motherhood’s news round up
Snippets of news and opinion from outlets around the world. Click the links for the full story.
• From Marketplace: “Some states consider slashing payments to parents who care for disabled kids”
For families with children who have severe disabilities, finding care for their kids is a constant struggle. That’s why some parents opt to take on that care themselves. In some cases, states will pay parents to be caregivers. But over the past year, at least 11 stateshave considered slashing these programs, including Indiana.
In Noblesville, Indiana, Jennifer Dewitt gave up full-time work to take care of her 15-year-old twins who have cerebral palsy. Her son Jackson is the most severe. He’s considered blind, unable to eat by mouth, has severe scoliosis, respiratory issues and has seizures every day.
“You’re always in a high-stress situation because it’s always life or death,” Dewitt said. “When is the next seizure coming? If I feed him this, is he gonna choke on it?”
The family is one of roughly 20,000 in Indiana who receive funds through a state Medicaid program called attendant care. It pays spouses and parents to provide hospital-level medical care for their disabled family members.
Dewitt said there are great home health workers out there, but they’re in short supply. Jackson needs around-the-clock care.
“I think almost every special needs family that I am connected to, all of us have stories of nurses just not showing up,” Dewitt said.
[…]When Indiana officials proposed cutting payments to parents to plug an unexpected budget shortfall of nearly $1 billion, families like Dewitt’s felt blindsided. She’s scared they may lose their house.
[…]Elizabeth Edwards, a senior attorney with the National Health Law Program, said the state is making a budget calculation here.
“If the state is saying that they are going to save money by not allowing families to be paid caregivers, that indicates, to me at least, an assumption that they don’t think the individuals will get that service,” Edwards said.
[…]Meanwhile, at least 13 other states have recently decided to allow parents and spouses to be paid caregivers. And 13 other states already did.
• From San Antonio Report: “San Antonio welcomes new school for inclusive early childhood education”
Parents of children with disabilities have found that many early childhood education programs in San Antonio lack the expertise, staff and resources to provide meaningful educational experiences for their children.
Among them are Carter and Taylor English, who discovered those obstacles when they sought to find child care for their daughter Isabelle, who was born with Down syndrome.
“When Isabelle was born, all we wanted was to find the best possible resources to support her growth and development,” Carter said in a statement announcing the school’s opening. “We soon realized that the resources were difficult to access and the childcare we needed didn’t exist.”
Knowing other families were likely facing the same issues, the family came together with others to start the Rise School San Antonio, the newest school in a network focused on preparing children from a young age for success in kindergarten.
The Rise School’s new campus at CHRISTUS Children’s Hospital in downtown San Antonio will welcome two classrooms of 12 students in August, each serving half typically developing students and half those with special needs.
[…]With the campus opening on the only freestanding children’s hospital in San Antonio, Rise students and families will benefit from the knowledge and expertise of CHRISTUS Children’s staff and researchers. The hospital will provide three of the four therapists planned for the classrooms, Hurd said, helping keep costs low and ensuring the school has “a really high-quality therapy team.”
[…]Online enrollment is now open for the school, which is under construction, with an anticipated completion in August.
• From KEZI 9: “Oregon State University dog-training program helps improve activity of kids with disabilities”
Researchers at Oregon State University said that children with developmental disabilities who engage regularly with their family dog and teach it a series of tricks and commands experienced a significant increase in daily physical activity, the college said on Wednesday.
OSU officials said that previous research has determined that 80% of American children are not getting at least of 60 minutes daily moderate to rigorous physical activity. The children in the experimental group of the researchers’ study increased their physical activity by 17 minutes per day and reduced their sedentary time by nearly an hour per day, according to college officials. OSU said that studies have also shown that children with developmental disabilities are significantly less physically active than their peers without disabilities.
“We often talk about physical activity as just fitness or exercise, but really, it’s about moving and being active on a daily basis,” said study co-author Megan MacDonald, head of OSU’s School of Exercise, Sport, and Health Sciences in the College of Health. “It’s getting out with your dog, playing, having fun.”
[…]MacDonald said that, in addition to physical activity, kids learned to recognize and respond to dogs’ body language and also gained more awareness of nonverbal cues from the people around them in addition to building a sense of responsibility and ownership in helping to take care of a family pet.
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