Children with cerebral palsy face have motor impairments that hinder their ability to chew and swallow properly. The disconnection between their brains and motor functions make it hard for them to tell when there is a spoon in their mouth or feel the difference between soft or solid food. While people without CP associate food with pleasure, kids with CP have a much more difficult time with it and it becomes more of a chore. To make matters even worse, many volunteers coming into the program ( including me ) aren't trained to properly feed and prevent the children from choking on their food. Many of the kids were fed laying down and there was confusion to which child was fed purred food vs.solid. Therefore, our group took notes, talked to occupational therapists, researched, and payed attention to the feeding behavior of each child.
We made feeding posters (written in both English and Vietnamese) and a volunteer manual to help educate the new volunteers on how to properly feed the children.
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| Ben designed the feeding poster. He put a lot of work into the daycare and was the only other stable volunteer with me from Day 1 so it was difficult saying goodbye to him this weekend :( |
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