The History of Assistive Equipment for Young Children
Children around the world struggle with physical disabilities that interfere with their ability to move around and interact, and unfortunately they don’t have the same options available to help remedy this that adults do. Younger children (6 months to 3 years old) do not have access to wheelchairs, as making one for the child would require it to be custom made, and therefore expensive. The wheelchairs are upwards of “$30,000 and are often not covered by insurance policies” (McAfee), meaning that for many families it is unrealistic and impossible to give the child a way to move when they are young. This inability to move for the first few years, can bring about cognitive, language, and problems with social skills, which all stem from the lack of independence (McAfee).
In order to help eliminate this Wicked Problem, we plan on creating a custom motorized ride-on car inspired by those created by Go Baby Go in Washington, to allow a disabled child to be transported in a fun and efficient manner. Our project will work with Dell Children’s Hospital to bring this innovation into the Austin community to improve the life of a child here, analyze just how helpful it is, and create a community to continue the Go Baby Go project in the future to further our cause.
Disabilities can get in the way of living one’s life to its fullest, and this is arguably most disruptive in children, who do not have as many assistive machines available to help them. Meaning that since they are still developing, they miss out on socializing and acquiring skills due to their disabilities. About half a million children in the US under the age of five suffer from motility disabilities, which can get in the way of both their ability to be transported and their ability to develop into an independent individual (Cheney).
There are many different reasons that a child under the age of five would have mobility problems, including physical disabilities and mobility impairment. Physical disabilities can be “defined as a disabling condition or other health impairment that requires adaptation” and range from congenital problems, to a result of injury, to cerebral palsy, to heart disease, and many other conditions (Disabled World). Mobility impairment falls underneath physical disabilities, however, refers solely to the loss or disability of limbs, dexterity and coordination issues in different organs. Children suffering from these physical disabilities are often confined to hospitals for much of their childhoods and have restricted movement. Our wicked problem focuses on both mobility and developmental issues associated with such impairments.
At the University of Delaware, Dr. Cole Galloway, a professor of physical therapy, “was particularly interested in finding ways to close what he calls ‘an exploration gap’ — the difference between typically developing children and those who suffer from mobility issues due to conditions like cerebral palsy and down syndrome” (Chaney); and his investigation of this “exploration gap” lead him to find that because children afflicted with mobility disabilities are not free to make their own decisions and move about their worlds as they please, they are unable to form the same skills as fully motile children. This issue encompasses more than just a disability to be able to move around, it’s a disability in connecting with one’s environment, and in the case of such young children—where learning and interacting with one’s environment is crucial to development—the inability to do so can have dire consequences. According to a study by Martha Farah of the University of Pennsylvania, “the more mental stimulation a child gets around the age of four, the more developed the parts of their brains dedicated to language and cognition will be in the decades ahead”(Jha), therefore children whose stimulation is limited due to disability can experience underdevelopment of those areas. In an attempt to solve this issue, Cole Galloway created Go Baby Go in 2012 to allow disabled toddlers and children too young for wheelchairs to be able to move around, getting them around the hospital and home and allowing them a fun experience (Go). This also helps them to build skills such as spatial awareness, social skills, confidence and independence (Go). He teamed up with Sunil Agrawal, a professor of mechanical engineering in 2007 to solve the problem with ride-on cars, a creation that takes the efficiency and independence of a wheelchair and suits it to a toddler’s size and amusement.
This filled the need for assistive machines for toddlers in Delaware, and since then Go Baby Go has expanded to include other states and even other nations, however, there is still no chapter of Go Baby Go or an equivalent in Texas. This has caused a need for such a product in Texas, and for our project specifically, the Dell Children’s Hospital in Austin.
Dell Children’s hospital has come up with solutions to this issue, including “lily pads”—platforms that can be attached to IV poles for toddlers and small children to ride on around the hospital. While this is a step in the right direction, these lily pads do not accommodate for children with paralysis that includes their upper bodies, or who have trouble supporting themselves and wouldn’t be able to remain upright on the lily pad while it was moving. Another issue with this is that it doesn’t help these toddlers develop autonomy and social skills, making them overly dependent upon others instead of having the confidence to make their own decisions—an important step in childhood development. Furthermore, this solution is limited to hospitals and not something super useful anywhere else.
The Go Baby Go’s ride-on cars are by far the most effective solution to this wicked problem—but they too could be improved. Project Zoom Zoom works to go above and beyond what work GBG has done to generate new innovative and effective cars for kids who need them!