M.A.E.S. Course

‘Movement Analysis & Education Strategies

for the Treatment of Children with Cerebral Palsy and similar neuro-developmental conditions’ 

A specialist course for Paediatric Therapists (PT,OT,SLT) who want to gain new insights, increased knowledge and develop their clinical reasoning and treatment skills for children with Cerebral Palsy and similar neurodevelopmental conditions.

Therapists and Doctors recommend this Course – a new and pioneering approach to the treatment and management of children with CP.         

•           Learn to treat dynamically
•           Develop creative thinking for your treatments
•           Acquire new observation and analytical skills
•           Develop an extensive repertoire of new treatment strategies
•           Gain new ways to inform and guide parents

Become an Expert:  Following successful completion of this course, therapists will be able to provide an expert, individualised ‘hands-on’ treatment to promote 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. 

“This is the course that I would really liked 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.

Course Dates:

Part 1:    8 -19 March 2021
Part 2:   12 – 23 April 2021

Length of Course:  4-Weeks ( 20 Days) course, in two parts of two weeks.
Each week is 5 Days,  Monday to Friday.

The period between Parts 1 and 2 is to ensure participants put into practice the knowledge and skills gained in Part 1, before returning for Part 2.

 

Venue:

Mali Dom,  Dnevni centar za rehabilitaciju djece i mladeži
(Care Center for Rehabilitation of Children and Young Adults)
Baštijanova ulica 1D, Zagreb

http://www.malidom.hr/en

Course Fee:  

Early Bird Fee:   £1,900 GBP

Regular/ Late Registration:  £2,300 GBP

5% Discount per person for any two or more work colleagues that register together.

Early Bird Ends 31 December 2020

Regular/ Late Registration full amount is due by 1 February 2021

Course lead by:

Jean-Pierre Maes and the M.A.E.S. Therapy Team Croatia                                   

Jean-Pierre Maes MCSP,  Consultant Neuro-Developmental Physiotherapist

Founder & Director MAES Therapy International

Jean-Pierre is an expert in the field of Cerebral Palsy and similar neuro-developmental conditions, with over 30 years’ experience of treating babies, children and adults.

He is renowned internationally for both his excellent clinical skills and teaching skills, mentoring therapists and leading courses related to a variety of neurodevelopmental conditions.

From 1998 to 2013 he was based at The Bobath Centre (London) as a Consultant Neuro-developmental Physiotherapist,  Senior NDT- Bobath Tutor  leading a variety of Basic and Advanced courses.  He was a Senior NDT- Bobath Tutor – one of the most experienced and influential international Senior Tutors and regular Course Leaders.

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 deeper knowledge and expert clinical skills.

Registration:

For further information and for an Application Form, contact Local Course Organisers:

MAES Therapy Team Croatia:

Therapists:   Marija Maras, Marija Juko, Jasminka Gagula

E:   maesterapija@gmail.com

 

Course Participant’s Criteria:

Participants must be experienced 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 cerebral palsy physiotherapy course, as well as to very experienced therapists who have already taken several specialist courses (e.g. Conductive Education, Vojta, NDT-Bobath, Sensory Integration, Halliwick, etc.).

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 2, 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:

30 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.

30 x Treatment Workshops ( Therapists’ live Case Presentations )

There will be a total of between 25 – 30 different children with Cerebral Palsy to treat during the 4 weeks,  allowing a high level of supervised practical sessions, allowing participants to link theory into practice and become expert in analysis and handling.

 

Click  HERE  to see photos  of the M.A.E.S. Course   Zagreb 2018

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 completed the M.A.E.S. Foundation Courses world-wide and are now all M.A.E.S. Trained Therapists:

 

“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. 

Davis, Senior Physiotherapist, NDT-Bobath Therapist,  London, UK

______

  

“ 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

______

  

“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 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 2018

_________

“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 2018

_________

“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 2018

__________

“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 2018

__________

 

“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  2018

 __________

“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 2018

___________

“A very useful way of working because when we analyse the child’s movements and set it in the MAES Framework, we understand the problem and what we need to solve. We cannot treat if we do not know the cause. MAES helps us to be very specific.

I will recommend the MAES Course to my colleagues – physiotherapists, occupational therapists and speech therapists.”

Krešimir Vlajnić, Physiotherapist
Zagreb, Croatia 2018

_________

“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 2018

__________

  

“The MAES Course was excellent.

I will go back home and I will be able to understand all my neuro patients better and I will plan my treatment sessions more effectively.

The MAES Therapy Approach and Framework helps you to analyse movement disorders in terms of skills and tasks and to effectively combine motor, sensory and cognition during therapy sessions.”

Beth Campos, Speech & Language Therapist,  NDT-Bobath Tutor,  Brazil

M.A.E.S. Trained Therapist

______

 

“The M.AE.S. Therapy Course hugely influenced my understanding and approach to Cerebral Palsy; a complete turnaround to that which I have learnt in the past.  I am better at understanding this approach and am also getting to applying the principals into practice.

This approach is more holistic in understanding the whole child and how they are finding solutions. Due to their injury they have learnt to find a solution by developing skills that are over-used or underdeveloped. In the M.A.E.S. Therapy Approach the long term outcome of the child is not limited but rather free for greater possibilities.

The course is not easy, but it is well worth learning this approach earlier, rather than later in your career. I see no other way, at present, that offers the child with CP a better opportunity to develop. The theory of M.A.E..S Therapy is strongly backed up with many practical treatment sessions that prove that this approach does work.”

Gillian Shead,  Senior Physiotherapist,  Johannesburg, South Africa

__________

 

“The MAES Course has completely changed how I understand the different difficulties of Cerebral Palsy. It has explained the aspects that could  not be explained by  other concepts before. It has filled in the ‘gaps’.

I now realise that there is a completely different way of looking at approaching children with CP. MAES allows you to take each individual child further in their abilities than any other approach I’m familiar with. 

This is a course for all three professions (PT,OT,SLT) and all three will come away with completely new skills and perception of CP. Thank you JP for pioneering this approach, so that we can have a bigger impact on children with CP.”

Anel van der Merwe, MCSP  Clinical Specialist Paediatric Physiotherapist
M.A.E.S. & Bobath-NDT Trained
UK

_________

 

Having completed the  Bobath-NDT Basic and Advanced Courses,  I had been looking for my “next step” to progress. 

The MAES Course has done that and given me new depth to my understanding of children with cerebral palsy. I am able to distinguish clearly between how each child presents, enabling me to adapt my therapeutic handling to specifically treat each child I see. The MAES Therapy Course has given me new knowledge and skills.  I highly recommend it to all paediatric therapists.”

Nikki Kennedy,  NDT-Bobath Physiotherapist, UK

______

 

“I was hoping to learn new strategies and it has given me that and more!  MAES has helped me to understand the ‘things’ I saw and had no explanation for. 

The MAES Therapy Approach and Framework is amazing and definitely how I will work in the future with all my patients. I think it makes our treatment much more specific and long lasting!  I really think that it is very useful and includes OT more than any other course I have ever attended. 

MAES Therapy is very holistic and as an OT I will be able to integrate everything.”

Marli Smit,  Occupational Therapist

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See more TESTIMONIALS  on the M.A.E.S. THERAPY website.

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