Interests of therapeutic education for motor disabled adolescents

Abstract

The Motor Education Institute (IEM) of Couzeix set up in June 2015 workshops of therapeutic education, with the aim of helping adolescents to better understand their motor disabilities and to reinforce their motivation for the rehabilitation. Between March and April 2015, the educational supports of this workshop entitled “understanding my motor disability” were elaborated in collaboration by the paramedical and the educative staffs, with the participation of volunteer teenagers. An interactive virtual support, with video animations, was realised in informatics course and a wooden mannequin was built in the carpentry workshop. Next, from June 2015, workshops of therapeutic education were proposed to the IEM volunteer customers. These sessions lasted one hour and were led by a PRM doctor, a physiotherapist and an occupational therapist. Anonymous questionnaires were delivered to the young participants at the beginning and the end of each session in order to evaluate their perceived interest. Between June 2015 and March 2016, 4 workshops “understanding my motor disability” were performed, among 12 adolescents, from 13 to 18 years old. The questionnaires filled before the session showed that a quarter of them are unable to explain their disability and that a third of them was poorly motivated by rehabilitation. The questionnaires filled at the end of the session revealed that all participants showed an important interest to the workshop and learnt something about their disability and that some of them rediscovered some motivation to participate to their rehabilitation. For the caregivers, the interest of these workshops was to facilitate the free expression of the young customers, to offer supports allowing to deal with personal problematic difficult to evocate spontaneously and to generate a peer group dynamic. Consecutively, they observed an improvement of the implication of the customers in their rehabilitation. The supports of therapeutic education developed in our IEM appear useful to help adolescents to better understand their motor disability and to improve their participation to their rehabilitation.