The effects of group-based education of handling skills for parents with children with cerebral palsy on family empowerment and child’s functional mobility

The present study is designed to investigate the effect of teaching the family how to use handling techniques on their empowerment and also the functional mobility of the child.

A clinical trial with a control group and an intervention group in parallel, which is randomized in a single-blind and stratified method. The study has one phase and the sample size of each group is 23 people.

The place of conducting the study is Tavanyab NGO and the method of conducting the study was explained in detail. The primary evaluator is subjected to the blinding process as a blind strain.

Inclusion criteria: The child has been diagnosed with spastic cerebral palsy by a neurologist; The child does not have vision problems; The child's family does not intend to perform any surgery during the implementation of interventions; The mother of the child can be present as a parent of the participant in the study; The mother (participant's parent) must be fluent in Persian and able to read.

Control group: The members of this group receive common occupational therapy interventions. The duration of providing common occupational therapy interventions commonly between the intervention and control groups will be 2 months (2 sessions per week and 45 minutes per session). Intervention group: The members of this group, while receiving common occupational therapy interventions, they also benefit from 5 related workshop sessions in case of increasing family awareness of their child's condition and training appropriate techniques for handling and positioning him.

Family empowerment; Gross motor function; Functional mobility

We plan to divide people based on the score of the GMFCS questionnaire into three categories with scores 1 and 2, with score 3 and with scores 4 and 5, and then to perform randomization in a way to select a number of samples from each of these categories almost equally in the intervention and control groups. First, by drawing a two-by-two table, we specify all the placement situations of the samples in the final groups: 1) intervention/control 2) control/intervention 3) intervention/intervention/control/control. Then, by lottery, one of these arrangement methods is selected and we exceed to the next step. In the next step, the ID of all the samples in the form of a code along with their GMFCS questionnaire scores are written on separate sheets and arranged randomly. Then in three envelopes (based on the scores of the GMFCS questionnaire, which had three categories with scores 1 and 2, with score 3 and with scores 4 and 5), on the sheets of the sorting system that was determined earlier (for example, intervention/intervention/control/control) In the same way, it is written separately and repetitively and placed inside triple envelopes. Then the sheets related to the ID of the samples (which apart from their ID code, also includes their GMFCS score) are revealed in order, and based on their GMFCS scores, we go to the desired envelope and take out the sorted sheets from inside it. Based on the writing on the pages inside the envelope (intervention or control), the target sample is randomly placed in one of the intervention or control groups.

The evaluator will not know which group each sample belongs to in all stages of the evaluation.