Infants and Toddlers with Spastic Cerebral Palsy: Innovations in Assessment and Intervention targeting Selective Motor Control

Course Description:

Ready to deepen your impact with infants and toddlers with or at risk of cerebral palsy (CP)? This dynamic session focuses on selective motor control, i.e. independent joint movement, which is the strongest predictor of function in children with spastic CP. You'll be introduced to Mini-SCALE, a novel, clinically feasible tool designed to assess selective control in children from 3 months to 4 years of age, that is based on the widely-used SCALE, Selective Control Assessment of the Lower Extremity.

But this session goes beyond assessment. We’ll explore innovative, play-based interventions using parent coaching models, instrumented toys, treadmills, and body-weight support to actively promote selective control in infants and toddlers with CP. Through rich video case examples and collaborative discussion, you’ll sharpen your clinical eye and build practical skills to both use and interpret Mini-SCALE with confidence and enhance selective motor control in young children through innovative intervention approaches.

Course Objectives:

Following this webinar, the participant will be able to:

• Describe the administration and scoring of Mini-SCALE, the Selective Control Assessment of the Lower Extremity for Infants and Toddlers.
• Use Mini-SCALE to accurately evaluate lower extremity selective motor control from videos of infants and toddlers with typical development, cerebral palsy, and high risk for cerebral palsy.
• Describe innovative, play-based interventions to actively promote selective motor control in infants and toddlers with cerebral palsy.

Speaker:

Barbara Sargent, PT, PhD

Barbara Sargent, PT, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Clinical Physical Therapy in the Division of Biokinesiology and Physical Therapy at the University of Southern California (USC). She is a Board-Certified Clinical Specialist in Pediatric Physical Therapy. She is Director of the Development of Infant Motor Performance Laboratory (DIMPL) at USC. Her research focuses on the study of motor learning and motor control to inform the early identification and rehabilitation of infants and children with movement dysfunction, specifically infants with and at high risk of cerebral palsy. She has contributed to the development of Mini-SCALE and the clinical practice guidelines for congenital muscular torticollis and developmental coordination disorder. She has published in peer-reviewed journals and lectured at national and international conferences to advance the practice of pediatric physical therapy.

Loretta Staudt, PT, MSPT

Loretta Staudt is a research physical therapist in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She also worked for over 30 years on the interdisciplinary team at the UCLA Early Intervention Program integrating physical therapy principles into the educational curriculum for infants and toddlers. She developed clinical and research programs for the selective posterior rhizotomy procedure for spastic cerebral palsy in Pediatric Neurosurgery at UCLA and was a co-founder of the Center for Cerebral Palsy at UCLA/Orthopaedic Institute for Children. Ms. Staudt is co-developer of the SCALE (Selective Control Assessment of the Lower Extremity) evaluation tool and the Mini-SCALE. She was a clinical evaluator for clinical trials for neuromuscular diseases at UCLA. She has been a speaker at numerous professional courses and workshops nationally and internationally.

Eileen Fowler, PT, PhD

Dr. Fowler is Adjunct Professor in the UCLA Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Director of Research and Education for the Center for Cerebral Palsy at UCLA, and Director of the Kameron Gait & Motion Analysis Laboratory. She is a faculty member of the Tarjan Center at UCLA. Dr. Fowler has a degree in physical therapy and a PhD from UCLA Physiological Sciences department with a major in Biomechanics and minor in Motor Control. Dr. Fowler has more than 30 years of experience in the evaluation and treatment of children with neuromuscular disorders, particularly cerebral palsy (CP). In her laboratory, gait kinematic and kinetic evaluations of patients with cerebral palsy are commonly performed to guide treatment planning. Her research program focuses on understanding the neural and biomechanical factors associated with functional impairment with a focus on pediatric onset conditions. A current research emphasis is reduced selective voluntary motor control (SVMC) in children with spastic CP.