About

Conductive Education is a learning approach. It’s holistic, intensive, dynamic and inclusive. It’s about celebrating the positives and starting from a place of opportunity. It’s a learning process and not a treatment or therapy. People actively learn components of the functional skills we need to be more independent and ultimately to have a better quality life.

How does it work?

One way to think of Conductive Education is that it’s a bit like a mix of special education and physical intervention (like occupational or physical therapy). It was developed by Hungarian neurologist Andras Peto in the 1940s, who was a pioneer in working with children with cerebral palsy.

Movement

We’re interested in how we can motivate your child to see themselves as active learners. We do this by breaking an action down into small tasks, practising and mastering each one, then putting them all together. And each of those tasks has to be fun! So, while a child is holding a ring and singing Wheels on the Bus, without even noticing, they’re learning the functional movements involved in lifting a cup with two hands. The movement is important, because being able to eat and drink on your own is an important function of independence.

Motivation

But there’s something else going on here. Each child experiences the growth of having tried, practised hard, and then achieving their goal. And that success motivates them to keep trying and learning even more. This is also why we start as early as we can; we want to set your child up to learn from an early age that they are capable of achievement.

Who is it for?

We’re strengths-based, so we don’t start from a diagnosis, we work with you and your child to explore together whether Conductive Education (or another intervention) could be helpful. Having said that, we understand that as a parent, you want a quick and easy answer. Conductive Education is effective for people with cerebral palsy, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, stroke or acquired brain injury. 

How is it different to physical therapy?

From a therapy perspective, there’s quite bit of crossover when it comes to the physical techniques that our specialist teachers use. But there are a couple of big differences between Conductive Education and physical therapies such as occupational or physiotherapy. One of them is our lifelong learning approach to movement; we’re about always growing and evolving, rather than a fix-its and one-off modifications. Another important difference is that we’re all about human connection. Social interaction and intrinsic motivation are part of our philosophy and practice; that’s why we’re a community, not an agency.