Assisting Hand Assessment Course
Date: Wednesday 11 – Friday 13 June 2008 / Venue:
The Bobath Centre
Lead tutor: Lena Krumlinde-Sundholm, OT PhD, Karolinska
Institute in Stockholm
What is the
AHA?
The Assisting Hand
Assessment is a recently developed test intended for use with
children who have a unilateral upper limb dysfunction, in
particular children with hemiplegic cerebral palsy or
obstetric brachial plexus palsy.
The Assisting Hand
Assessment is based on the recognition that our two hands can
assume different roles and that one hand, the assisting hand,
does not need to be as dexterous or as quick as the other more
dominant hand when bimanual activities are being performed.
The Assisting Hand Assessment therefore
measures and describes the effectiveness with which a child
uses their affected hand in order to assist during bimanual
activities. The intention of the assessment is to
reflect the child’s usual performance and not their best
capacity.
How is it
administered and scored?
The Assisting Hand Assessment is
administered as an enjoyable semi-structured play session
using toys which require the use of two hands. The play
session can be presented in the form of a structured board
game which lasts between 10 and 15 minutes. The play session
is videoed and scored from the video. Observable performance
skills during the play session are used to score 22 items
(e.g. reach, grasp, release, initiation, stabilization, etc.)
on a 4 point rating scale.
What training
will I receive on this course?
To become a
certified AHA-rater completion of a training course and a
number of calibration cases is required. This course teaches
the AHA English version and includes information about test
construct, testing procedures and scoring practice on a range
of children from videos. A manual with detailed scoring
criteria and scoring form are provided.
For
more information about AHA, please visit
www.ahanetwork.se
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