In a sort of continuation from my last post. One of the things I want to develop here is making rehabilitation equipment from easily available items – well basically rubbish! As well as providing items to use in the hospital, I also want to make things for home use to inspire patients and their families about what they can do.
I have a few ideas from the book “Disabled Village Children” and things I have seen around (e.g. plastic bag balls) but wonder if anyone is able to help come up with some other ideas.
The sort of items I have easy access to are tin cans, plastic containers, plastic bags, cardboard, paper, metal bottle tops, plastic bottles, sticks, stones, maybe small bits of wood.
I have both children and adult patients with every type of disability imaginable so be creative 
As an OT my first response will have to be cut plastic bags into strips and then weave the strips into rope. Sure the rope could then be made into baskets
Fill plastic bottles with sand for dumbells
Pierce holes in bottle tops then feed them onto sticks to work on fine motor control.
Get children making cars with tin cans
Beads from paper. Altho you will need to source some glue from somewhere
By: Grace on 26 June, 2009
at 9:02 pm
No idea, I stopped watching Blue Peter ages ago, but I’ll pass this onto Tany.
Good to catch up with your news. I hope you’re doing well.
By: Phil on 10 July, 2009
at 9:49 am
Hey hon, sorry it has been so long no talk to, although sounds like its all going well.
As per your question will have a proper think over next couple of days but off top of my head, if they weave plastic bags into rope, maybe slightly stretch could possibly be a theraband alternative?
Also if you have plastic medical gloves – mini theraband for hand physio
Will also put your blog comment onto our physio facebook page and see if that brings up any ideas
Tany x
By: Tany on 10 July, 2009
at 5:06 pm
Hi Z
I’d be really interested in seeing how this goes and maybe helping come up with ideas. Some of my product design friends would also be good. I’ll get them to have a look at this page. Fun trying to help from the other hemisphere!
[In fact it reminds me of the bit in Apollo 13 where the boffins are down on the Earth s(c?)ellotaping round things into square holes while the astronauts are running out air and waiting for the answer.]
Maybe you could take photographs of what you can see and we could have a day of prototyping with the same stuff and get back to you.
What sort of rehab equipment is most useful?
By: Jamie on 10 July, 2009
at 6:02 pm
Thanks for your support on this. As far as I have got so far is plastic bottles filled with sand and a ‘peg test’ which is a piece of wood with nine holes in it and pegs which people have to put in the holes.
I’m still working out how the “plastic bags” into rope thing works… anyone know how to do it?
Jamie, one of the bigger problems is the fact that there are no armchairs in the hospital (unlike the UK where there is one by every bed) and the beds are too high for people to put their feet on the ground. It would be great to have something that people could comfortably rest supported (in an armchair like position) on the edge of the bed. But I doubt this can be done using free materials!!
Will let you know of other problems as I come across them.
By: zdy1 on 19 September, 2009
at 9:57 am