A RANDOMISED CONTROLLED TRIAL TO DETERMINE THE EFFECTS OF A TREADMILL TRAINING PROGRAM FOR SCHOOL AGED CHILDREN WITH CEREBRAL PALSY.

Experimental group intervention: Children in the experimental group will complete a 9-week, twice a week partial body weight support treadmill training program, conducted within normal school hours. A physiotherapist will oversee the program but all of the sessions will be directly supervised by a trained and experienced therapy assistant. The children will wear their usual footwear during training, including any orthoses. At each session, the child will be fitted with the appropriate harness, and then assisted into the partial body weight support apparatus, which will be placed over the treadmill. A large mirror will be positioned in front of the treadmill to provide the child with feedback on postural alignment and to assist motivation. The child will be asked to stand as upright as possible, and the body weight support will be reduced until the child either begins to flex at the hips or knees, or sit in the harness. The treadmill will be started at the lowest speed (0.2kph) and the speed will be gradually increased in 0.1kph increments to a speed where the child is able to step forward comfortably. If required, the trainer will provide assistance to initiate weight shift or to initiate the swing phase of the gait cycle. Similarly if the child can not independently achieve heel strike, the trainer will manually guided the foot to approximate better heel strike. Each session will go for a maximum of 30 minutes. However, the session will finish earlier if the child indicated they want to stop, or if the child stops stepping forward. The trainer will keep a logbook for each child to record the number of sessions attended, the speed of the treadmill during each training session, and the amount of time and distance walked during each session.