Course Title:
‘Movement Analysis & Education Strategies for the Treatment of Children with Cerebral Palsy and similar neuro-developmental conditions’
Act on key mechanisms to improve children’s ability to keep learning and progressing, whilst avoiding (or delaying) a ‘plateau’ effect.
Target the brain: improve function of: Basal Ganglia for clients with Dyskinetic CP, White Matter for clients with PVL, Cerebellum for clients with Ataxia, …
Highly practical in nature, this course is designed to expand your repertoire of interventions, structure and develop clinical reasoning and clinical expertise.
A specialist course for Paediatric Therapists (PT,OT,SLT) and medical doctors who want to gain new knowledge and understanding and further develop their clinical reasoning and treatment skills for children with Cerebral Palsy and similar neurodevelopmental conditions.
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Learn to treat dynamically
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Develop creative thinking for your treatments
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Acquire new observation and analytical skills
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Develop an extensive repertoire of new treatment strategies
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Gain new ways to inform and guide parents
Become an Expert: Following successful completion of this course, therapists will understand how to provide an expert ‘hands-on’ treatment, individualised to each child, based upon the specific ‘insult’ to their brain, rather than just being based upon ‘type’.
MAES Therapy promotes the development of skills in terms of mobility, hand function, constructive play, interaction and communication, for each child with Cerebral Palsy.
Unique of its kind, this course has a strong emphasis on high-level observation, analysis and clinical skills.
Length of Course: 4-Week ( 20 Days) Postgraduate course, in two parts of two weeks.
Dates :
Part 1: 15 – 26 May 2023 Online via Zoom Weeks 1 & 2
Part 2: 12 – 23 June 2023 Face-to-Face Weeks 3 & 4
Each week is 5 Days, Monday to Friday.
Week 1 15 – 19 May 2023
Week 2 22 – 26 May 2023
Week 3 12 – 16 June 2023
Week 4 19 – 23 June 2023
It is very helpful for Participants’ learning to plan and make arrangements to use the period between Part 1 and Part 2 to put into practice the knowledge and skills gained in Part 1, before coming together for Part 2.
Venue for Part 2: Face-to-Face
Mali Dom, Dnevni centar za rehabilitaciju djece i mladeži
(Care Center for Rehabilitation of Children and Young Adults)
Baštijanova ulica 1D, Zagreb
Link: http://www.malidom.hr/en
Course Fee:
- Early Bird Fee: €2,400 Euros
- Regular/ Late Fee: €2,750 Euros
- 5% Discount per participant for any two colleagues from the same workplace that register together.
Early Bird Ends 31 December 2022
Regular/ Late Registration is due by 1 March 2023
Further Information and to Apply:
For further information and for an Application Form, contact:
Local Organisers in Zagreb:
MAES Therapy Neurodevelopmental Physiotherapists:
Marija Maras, Marija Juko, Jasminka Gagula, Ana Milošević
E: maesterapija@gmail.com
Course Participant’s Criteria:
Participants must be Paediatric Therapists (Physiotherapists, Occupational Therapists, Speech Therapists) or medical Doctors (paediatricians, neurologists), with at least two years’ experience in treating children with Cerebral Palsy and similar neurological conditions. The course will appeal to therapists who are about to take their first postgraduate course in the field of Cerebral Palsy and will appeal equally as well to very experienced therapists who have already taken several specialist courses.
Course Format:
Presented at post-graduate level, this certified CP paediatrics course is very ‘hands-on’. The format will include theoretical lectures, treatment demonstrations, workshops, case presentations and supervised daily practical sessions with patients during weeks 3 and 4.
Unique of its kind, this neurodevelopmental course has a strong emphasis on high-level observation, analysis and clinical skills. There is an unusually high level of supervised practical sessions (almost 50% of time), with a wide variety of case presentations, giving depth and breadth to the learning experience.
The course is specially designed to give participants time to translate theory into clinical practice and become expert in handling and managing their clients with neuro-developmental conditions.
Course Aims:
This course aims to:
- Provide a ‘Framework’ for an effective assessment and better understanding of the challenges and needs of children with Cerebral Palsy (CP) and similar neurodevelopmental conditions
- Gain expertise in analysis of coordination and effective and structured clinical reasoning skills.
- Analyse Tasks in term of fine and gross motor, sensory, perceptual, biomechanical and cognitive components.
- Relate the quality of execution of given tasks to the specific skills that the child has been able to develop and use to accomplish these tasks.
- Predict motor behaviour (prognosis) based upon an in-depth analysis of typical presentations associated to spastic hypertonia, dyskinetic CP, ataxia, hypotonia and CP associated with preterm birth.
- Understand the short and long-term consequences for the child to engage in complex activities, when the skills available are missing and consequently for therapists to establish priorities and short and long-term treatment plans to change the child’s natural course of development.
- Develop high-level problem-solving skills to provide each child with specific sensory-motor experiences to make best use of their own potential for improvement.
- Prioritise and identify which specific skills a child is missing and that need to be promoted and at the same time discouraging the compensatory strategies this child is over-relying upon and which prevents the development of more advanced skills.
- Expand creative thinking and develop an extensive repertoire of treatment strategies and skills, which can then be applied more confidently in a range of situations to enable the child to learn new ways that he would have difficulty or not be able to develop on his own.
- Effectively inform and guide parents during treatment sessions, including the use of toys for play and advise them how to best interact with their child during activities of daily living in a home environment.
Development of clinical skills:
Throughout the 4 weeks Therapists will have:
20 x Practical Sessions with 1 child being treated by 2 or 3 therapists.
Therapists generally work in pairs with 1 child at a time and throughout the course they have a variety of children with different presentations of Cerebral Palsy.
20 x Treatment Workshops ( Therapists’ live Case Presentations )
There will be a total of around 20 – 30 different children with Cerebral Palsy and similar neurodevelopmental conditions to treat during Part 2, allowing a high level of supervised practical sessions, allowing participants to link theory into practice and become expert in analysis and handling.
Course Leader :
Jean-Pierre Maes MCSP Consultant Neuro-Developmental Physiotherapist
Founder & Director MAES Therapy International
Jean-Pierre is a renowned international expert in the field of Cerebral Palsy and similar neuro-developmental conditions, with over 30 years’ experience of treating babies, children and adults.
He was a Senior NDT- Bobath Tutor – one of the most experienced and influential international Senior Tutors and regular Course Leaders.
However, Jean-Pierre wanted to progress and improve the treatment of children further and so he decided to leave NDT-Bobath and now practices and teaches the pioneering M.A.E.S. Therapy Approach.
Due to demand, he now leads M.A.E.S. Courses world-wide, teaching the advanced MAES Therapy Approach for paediatric therapists who want to specialise, or to further specialise, in the treatment of children with CP and similar neurodevelopmental conditions and who want to gain new knowledge and expert clinical skills.
See Past MAES Courses in Croatia:
2021 https://maestherapy.com/4th-m-a-e-s-course-completes-in-croatia/
2018 https://maestherapy.com/3rd-maes-course-completes-in-croatia/#
2015 https://maestherapy.com/second-maes-therapy-course-in-croatia-successfully-completed/
2014 https://maestherapy.com/maes-therapy-course-croatia-2014/
Therapists and Doctors recommend this Course:
The best accreditation is from fellow professionals who judge and value the course and the new knowledge and skills they gain.
Below are a few comments from some therapists who have successfully completed the M.A.E.S. 4-Week Course :
“This is the course that I would really like to have taken earlier in my career, as it would have saved me many years of searching for answers to my questions about Cerebral Palsy.”
“ I would recommend this MAES Therapy Course to all therapists.”
Mihaela Grubišić, Physiotherapist, Occupational Therapist
Head of Department Sensory Integration Therapy,
Special Hospital for Children with neurodevelopmental and motor disorders.
Zagreb, Croatia
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“I think that every therapist who works with children with CP and other neurological difficulties must attend this MAES Course to be able to go further with their knowledge and treatment improvement. And most importantly the course gives different ways to understand and improve the treatment of children with CP that ‘standard methods’ don’t give.
Matea Lastrić, Physiotherapist
Zagreb, Croatia“I am a Bobath therapist and have 12 years’ of experience working with children with CP. This MAES Course is the one I had the most benefit from. It helped me to go much deeper in understanding the problems of children with CP. I also understand that I must go much further in improving my knowledge and my skills, but I gain confidence from MAES to start exploring and I’m very excited with the journey I have ahead of me”.
Ana Milošević, Physiotherapist
Belgrade, Serbia“The MAES Therapy Course is definitely the most useful and professional course I have ever participated in. After this course I feel like a completely different and improved therapist and this feeling is very good. Every therapist who wants to develop their practical, theoretical and generally professional skills in working with children with neurological disorders should go on this course. Thank you!”
Hrvoje Gudlin, Physiotherapist MPT
Zagreb, Croatia“I think traditional therapies are no longer valid. I think everyone needs to be brave and open-minded, so that the world of child therapy can move forward. We have a chance to change things for the better for children with CP and MAES Therapy achieves this. Highly recommended!”
Asena Dönmez, Physiotherapist
Istanbul, Turkey“Senior Therapists can deepen and upgrade their knowledge and skills if they are prepared to look beyond what they have you learnt before. With MAES Therapy they can get many answers to questions that appeared in their previous work and that traditional methods couldn’t give them the answers.
The MAES Framework allows me to better structure my observation and where to start, what it means from the point of view of the brain and to be able to use that to find and address the specific main problem of a child.”
An excellent course!”Danijela Šadl Jurković, Physiotherapist
Zagreb, Croatia“I would recommend all therapists who work with children to take this MAES Course to really understand the child with CP and other neurodevelopmental conditions. MAES gives a holistic way of thinking, it gives therapists the chance to grow as a specialist and it gives the child opportunities to improve not only for now, but for the future.
Usually I look for improving a child’s participation, I was practicing the task with the child. MAES has helped me understand that for the child’s future, it is important to work on quality. Excellent!
Jelena Špionjak, Physiotherapist DPT
Zagreb, Croatia“I now know that tasks and functional activities are not the key points of treatment – developing skills is. Using the MAES Framework helps you to see where to look and how to better plan the treatment. Every day you must look again and make changes because every type of CP is different and every child with the same type of CP is also different and each child is an individual, changing during treatment.
The MAES Course is positively life changing!”
Suzana Čorak, Physiotherapist BPT
Zagreb, Croatia“I learned new ways of treating children with CP. Now I don’t see the child just through the motor function, but I understand the child in his entirety, in a more holistic way. I think the MAES Framework is a great tool for analyzing and working with a child.”
Nikolina Stupnišek, Physiotherapist
Zagreb, Croatia“I think every therapist working with children with neurodevelopmental conditions needs this MAES Course and new perspective. Before coming to the course I was discussing with my colleagues and they are often stuck and not satisfied with what they can do. I think MAES Therapy shines a new light for the way forward. I want my colleagues to also take this course.”
Pelin Küçükali Physiotherapist
Istanbul, Turkey“The M.A.E.S. Foundation Course has provided the most detailed and comprehensive teaching on cerebral palsy of any course, or ‘on the job’ training I have ever received. It has changed my understanding of children’s presentations and has provided clear information on why we should view CP from the brain perspective, rather than take secondary effects of the brain lesion as a starting point in therapy.
Lectures practical sessions and workshops have complimented one another to broaden our knowledge and help us think clearly and logically when analysing and treating children with cerebral palsy. The organisation and teaching on the M.A.E.S Course have been fantastic. I strongly recommend this course to all paediatric Therapists treating children with neurodevelopmental conditions.”
Lauren Twin, Highly Specialist Paediatric Physiotherapist
NHS Essex, UK“I would recommend this M.A.E.S. Course to any therapist who feels there is something missing in what they do. I have learnt more on this course then I ever expected to. I am now a different and more effective therapist. I felt something was missing in my treatment approach and this course has filled that gap. All therapists should complete this course and none would regret it.”
Chris Taylor, NHS Community Paediatric Physiotherapist
Kent, UK“The content and flow of the course was excellent, giving me the chance to understand the importance of looking at the child holistically, to understand why they move in the way they do and to link psychology behind their movements. Using the M.A.E.S. Framework, I will be able to understand my patients deeply, identifying the skills they are missing or they are over relying upon. The M.A.E.S Course gives Therapists new insights to stop treating symptomatically and to find the real cause of the problem and to start looking from the child’s perspective. It’s time to start thinking out-of-the-box!”
Christina Zapantioti, Paediatric Physiotherapist
London“This course is by far the best learning experience I have ever had. I never expected to learn this much. I have a totally new and much more or in understanding cerebral palsy and how this impacts on children in and holistic way. It has also given a very detailed framework to analyse children with CP and how to then provide a very individualised treatment approach.
I now understand why I need to approach children with CP in different ways, depending upon the lesion in the brain.
The tutors have all been excellent and are very supportive, especially if you are finding something challenging. If someone has the chance to attend this course, then they should. This MAES Course is really good value for money for all that you get in return, as well as the ongoing support your provided with. Highly recommended ! “
Hannah Westwood, Highly Specialist Paediatric Occupational Therapist
NHS Essex, UK“I am NDT- Bobath trained and was looking for a course to ‘fill in the gaps’ that NDT doesn’t cover and to enable me to better treat the most complex children on my caseload; this course did this brilliantly. The course was excellent and I would highly recommend it to any therapist who is committed to developing their practice to the highest level. ”
R. Davis, Senior Physiotherapist, NDT-Bobath Therapist, London, UK
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“I have found the M.A.E.S. THERAPY Course to be very helpful and was thrilled by the way that it encompasses the principles of embodiment (embodied cognition) and principles of learning, MAES is very update with modern neuroscience.
I hope that the enthusiasm and the knowledge of MAES Therapy will spread.
I would highly recommend this course.”
Tina Bregant, MD, PhD, Paediatrician
Ljubljana, Slovenia, Europe______
“ I would recommend this MAES Therapy Course to all therapists.”
Mihaela Grubišić, Physiotherapist, Occupational Therapist Head of Department Sensory Integration Therapy, Special Hospital for Children with neurodevelopmental and motor disorders. Zagreb, Croatia
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