What moves you Children with disabilities and movement | HU University of Applied Sciences Utrecht

Children with disabilities move considerably less than their peers without disabilities. Our aim is to improve participation in movement activities by creating two toolboxes. One toolbox focuses on changes in behaviour while the other toolbox focuses on the collaboration between child physiotherapists and neighbourhood sports coaches.

The purpose of the study ‘Wat beweegt jou?!’ (‘What moves you?’) is to develop and test two toolboxes that support children with disabilities and their parents to engage in movement activities. This is important because movement and exercise is beneficial for the proper development and general health of all children.

One toolbox focuses on changing behaviour on the basis of main themes (habits and impulses, knowing and discovering, seeing and understanding, desire and ability, doing and persevering). Paediatric physiotherapists can use these resources to support children with disabilities and their parents. Paediatric physiotherapists can use the second toolbox to improve the collaboration with neighbourhood sports coaches.

This project is still ongoing. Intermediate results can be found on our website (in Dutch).

01 November 2018 - 01 October 2020

We are developing the toolboxes together with everyone involved. Afterwards, paediatric physiotherapy practices and organisations for neighbourhood sports coaches will be involved in a trial of the toolboxes. Based on their experience, these toolboxes will be improved and tested again. This will be a circular process.

The ‘What moves you?’ project is linked to the research activities of the ‘Kind met beperkingen en participatie in beweegactiviteiten’ (‘Child with disabilities and participation in movement activities’) project.