Beckons the Dragon - Part 1

Hey everyone, it's been sometime since my last post but here is the 1st part of my 4-part post on my PT Abroad placement in Shanghai! I worked with children suffering from cerebral palsy, autism, ADHD and Down Syndrome while I was there. It has been a wonderful experience and I definitely did not regret making that choice to go.

The Centre I worked at had three different rooms: the “Physical Therapy room”, the “Conductive Education room” and the “Sensory Integration room”. Each had different types of children and different equipment. Of the three room, the one that physio had most in common with was the Physical Therapy room.
In this room, I saw a range of children. Amongst the many children, there was one child that was positioned very poorly in the wheelchair. She had very high tone in both her upper limbs and lower limbs and it was very difficult to even try to extend her arm. Her hands were in the small space between the armrest and her trunk was rotated towards the right. Her hips were also internally rotated and it seemed to me she had windswept hips.
A reason why she was in such a bad position could be due to the size of the wheelchair? The wheelchair was too big for her and thus could not give her adequate support to keep her in an upright posture. The staff did try to put extra towels to support her trunk but I think not enough towels were used.
I also noticed that none of the staff were doing any therapy with her. She was just left to sit in the corner. As it was only my second day at the Centre, I felt I might not have seen the bigger picture. In a sense, I may have missed the parts where the staff did the passive movements and muscle stretches and any other therapy that they have lined up for her.
I had a whole plan drawn up for her. She requires vigorous therapy to prevent deterioration. What else could be done for her if there was not enough staff to carry out therapy for her? Afterall, I will only be there for four weeks, and when I leave who will help her? I feel for the children there and hope that things will start to get better for them.