Training families to adequately deliver home-based CIMT

Constraint induced movement therapy (CIMT) can be used to promote the use of the affected upper extremity in children with one sided hemiplegia (Eliason et al., 2011). Novak and colleagues (2020) describe CIMT as a greenlight therapy for children with one-sided hemiplegia. Greenlight therapies take a top-down approach to intervention, incorporating real-life tasks and activities, self-generated active movements, high intensity therapy, and child-directed goal targeting (Novak et al., 2020). With pediatric populations, CIMT protocols are modified to involve more weeks of therapy for less time per day, delivered over several days per week with a greater emphasis on the indirect delivery of intervention, using home-based CIMT programs. These modified home-based approaches assure the dosage of therapy is above usual and customary therapy for pediatric clients and maintains fidelity to the essential elements of CIMT (DeLuca et al., 2012; Palomo-Carrión et al., 2020; Ramey et al., 2013. Common modified CIMT (mCIMT) protocols involve an initial training session for parents/caregivers, daily intervention of mCIMT completed by parents/caregivers at home, and frequent monitoring by supervising therapists (Eliasson et al., 2011).