Such disabilities affect far more than just mobility and manual dexterity.
Children with movement disabilities learn, like every other child, from experience. Being unable to control movement reliably involves every aspect of their lives, with implications for their psychological development, their families, and the services and professions providing for them.
It is vital that those who help the children do not do everything for them, which can easily teach dependence without necessarily lowering frustration.
This can be quite a skilled job and a lot of people need special training.
Unfortunately the children's fragmented experiences may be hard enough to integrate for harmonious cognitive and emotional development, without their also facing services which are themselves fragmented into the 'multidisciplinary team'.
The Government now insists that all children's services be integrated at local level and that everyone working with children should follow certain common training modules (the 'common core'). Government ministers are challenging simplistic notions of educational inclusion for all; academics are voicing concerns about the multidisciplinary team.
A conference in London today (10 March) heard children's minister Margaret Hodge's vision of 'joined up' working, and about the international experience of Conductive Education, providing one-stop, uni-disciplinary help for motor-disabled children and their families through the profession of 'conductor'. In the UK, conductors already work in around 40 settings, mainly in early years.
* For information on training at the National Institute of Conductive Education, short courses, whole-school experiences and full professional training call 0121 449 1569.
In the UK, conductors already work in around 40 settings, mainly in early years. Socially advanced Norway is now incorporating conductors and Conductive Education into its national child habilitation system.
Nothing new here. In 1970 the authoritative Younghusband Report expressed its own concern about interdisciplinary working, called for common courses for different professions and concluded: 'In some instances further specialist or "hybrid" courses are also desirable'.
Time to grasp the nettle - not just in respect to movement disability.
