Information On Spider Therapy

On the 25th August Ella-Marie started spider therapy in Risca, is was a 3 week long course of intense therapy which lasted for 3 hours a day. On the first day the physios assessed Ella to see where her main weaknesses were and then worked out a programme which they could work with every day. Her programme consisted of one and a half hours of floor work and one and half hours of work in a state of the art metal frame with A LOT of elastic ropes attached, they have named this the "spider" as is does resemble a spiders web.

When Ella was in the spider it enabled the therapists to implement a full course of exercises in any position with out having to support her themselves. Ella was able to stand unsupported other than by the elastic ropes and also play games like any other child her own age, once she realised she could bounce she was just like "tigger" and the look on her face was enough to make any mum smile. At the end of the 3 weeks Ella's head control had improved immensely and she is now trying to support herself as much as she can, she now tolerates her standing frame for up to an hour a day, where as before we couldn't get her past 10 minutes. When using the "spider" she used a treadmill so she could practice the art of taking steps, something that many of us take for granted, at the beginning of the course Ella could not take more than 30 steps without assistance on her feet, on the last day of the 3 weeks Ella took 150 steps 10 of which were aided the rest she did slowly but on her own. The "spider" seems to have strengthened muscles that Ella rarely uses making her use them a whole lot more and has also strengthened the muscles that she should be using, we as a family could never have sent Ella to "spider therapy" if it wasn't for her fund and kind donations made by everyone, at a cost of £1500 for 3 weeks it is quite alot to commit to, We are hoping to book her into another 3 week session at the end of the year as the centre which is called footsteps ltd (wales) is only open from June to December, ideally we would like her to do 9 weeks out of a year as after 3 the weeks she has improved greatly and we can only imagine what 9 weeks could do! For more information on spider therapy and footsteps ltd please visit their website www.footsteps.ltd.uk