3. Deliver care



Rehabilitation interventions for motor functions and mobility can be delivered through:

  • Client education and advice for the person and their family
  • Direct training in exercises or techniques to complete at home
  • Supervised or assisted exercises or mobility practice
  • Referrals to other services

The delivery of care involves:

  1. Explaining the interventions to the person
  2. Demonstrating the interventions and letting the person
  3. Practice the intervention in your presence to ensure safe home implementation.

An older woman and her son are seating, talking to a health worker


Range of motion

Target: Maintain or increase the range of motion at a joint.

Intervention:

  • Client education and advice about good positioning of the joints to prevent further difficulties
  • Exercises and stretches  to maintain or increase flexibility of muscles and ligaments that support the joint
  • Prescription of antispastic / antispasmodic pharmacological agents, in combination with exercises and stretches.

Provision of walking aids, orthoses.



Muscle strengthening

 Target: Prevent muscle wasting or increase muscle strength.

 Intervention:

  • Exercises to maintain or strengthen specific muscles
  • Functional exercises, such as going for a walk each day, or practicing getting in and out of a chair

Provision of assistive products, such as walking aids, grab bars, transfer boards, modified eating and drinking aids, toilet and shower chairs.

a woman lies on the floor exercising her right leg

a man practices standing up and sitting down from a chair


Gait/Walking 

 Target: Improving the safety and ease of walking

 Intervention:

  • Muscle strengthening exercises
  • Assisted walking practice
  • Balance training
  • Correcting gait patters that are unsafe or painful
  • Part practice, or learning the skills or mobility with an impairment
  • Education about falls risk, and what to do the person does fall
  • Functional exercises, such as going for a walk each day.
  • Provision of assistive products such as walking aids, orthoses


a man standing with a four point walking stick, being assisted by a health worker


Posture and positioning

Target: Positioning the body to support good function.

 Intervention:

  • Client education and advice about good positioning of the joints to prevent further difficulties
  • Muscle strengthening exercises
  • Referral for the provision of wheelchairs that provide postural supports, if they are a wheelchair user who has difficulty sitting upright.


Firoz is sitting in his wheelchair, talking to a health worker, with his mother


Transfers

 Target: Safe and effective transfer skills.

 Intervention:

  • Client education and advice about safe transfer techniques
  • Assisted transfer practice
  • Muscle strengthening exercises
  • Provision of assistive products, such as a transfer board or transfer belt.


A transfer belt with handles


a curved plastic transfer board