Please visit this page for updated information from the Neurodisability committee
March 2021 Newsletter
The ND committee has continued to meet regularly with virtual meetings since June 2020 and is now in its 7th year. Many of our original members had been on since we started in 2014. In keeping with APCP National committee guidance, we have been working to avoid everyone coming off committee at once to ensure continuity. This year we will have 3 members stepping down, me included. In January, we welcomed Tabitha Folly (Spina Bifida representative) and Claire Higgins (London representative).
Vacancies will be advertised in July but we will have openings for representatives for Scotland, West Midlands and Acquired Brain injury.
We are a dynamic and productive group of dedicated professionals, and a great bunch of people to work with. If you haven’t been involved in APCP at a national level and are keen to get involved, please apply or get in touch to discuss further.
One of the last things we did as a committee in 2020 was hold the ND Foundation course in February 2020. The feedback from the course was overall very positive with good suggestions for making it even better the next time. Due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, we decided in September 2020 to fully postpone the Foundation course for 2021. We do plan on holding it again in Feb/March 2022 so watch out for information. We would hope the 2022 course could be in person. Further information to follow.
Since 2014 we have produced guidance documents on NMES and SCI with an ABI document in the final stages. We have organised courses for NMES and Establishing CPIP within the UK. As noted earlier, we have developed a Foundation course for Neurodisability that ran in 2019 and 2020. Development of an Advanced Course is in our current 5yr plan.
One of our new members Tabitha is already collaborating with SHINE (Spina Bifida-Hydrocephalus-Information-Networking-Equality) and other Occupational and Physiotherapy colleagues on a joint document for therapists to follow from the age of 2m to 1yr. Watch this space!
Our committee work has also been instrumental in further development of other networks for colleagues working within neurodisability. The CPIP NN was established following our 2015 course and became an APCP Specialist Interest Group (SIG) in 2019. In 2018 we surveyed members regarding physiotherapists injecting Botulinum Toxin-A. The networking from this survey led to the establishment of British Neurotoxin Network Paediatrics (https://www.bnnpaediatrics.org/) of which the APCP is an Affiliated Member.
It has been an absolute pleasure and privilege to be on the ND committee and have the opportunity to be the chair. I am sure the success of the committee will carry on for years to come.
Katie Kinch