For the last 10 weeks I was placed at Hillcrest Hospital for my practical during which I, together with two of my class mates, had to run a group with Cerebral Palsy clients. The group sessions had to be centred around domestic, leisure and game activities. We were presented with the clients names on a sheet of paper and as we made our way through the hospital putting these names to faces I very quickly became more and more worried. Every single one of our group members was severely severely physically disabled and most of them could barely communicate. I left the hospital that day with one thought running through my head: How on earth were we going to run a successful group with these people?

The answer to that question now 10 weeks later is very simple....

Yes our group members were all very physically limited and yes their communication was either nothing or three or four incoherent words strung together but that didn’t mean that a group with goals, a group with cohesion and dynamics could not be formed with these people. As the weeks swept by our group began to emerge. We had individual roles becoming evident - an energiser who boosted all the other group members, an opinion giver who always had something to say about the task at hand even if it took him a while to say it, an information seeker, an encourager and a handful of followers just going along with things.  Although it took a fair amount of probing and initiating from us as therapists the group members begun to interact with one another and respond to one another. They formed this silent bond that was so evident at 9:30am every Tuesday morning in the loud noise coming from them doing their favourite musical warm up.

 By the last group session there we had a group of middle aged cerebral palsy clients playing a game of picture bingo with the more ‘physically able’ members assisting the less able members and a member who arrived at the group aphasic now laughing uncontrollably and saying the odd word or two to the person next to her. It was only then that I as therapist leading that group really looked at and reflected on the process of how we got from week one to week ten.  

Looking at the obvious...

What did we just do? We took seven cerebral palsy clients, we got them together in a group every Tuesday and we ran group sessions based on leisure, crafts and games.

What were the steps? Discussing with the group members what they would like to do, planning activities for the sessions, fetching the clients and bringing them to the group, running warm up activities, running main activities.

How did we work together? We took it in turns to plan activities, we came up with ideas on how to adapt things, how to improve things, we discussed what went wrong, what went right and why, we helped each other run the sessions and we utilised each other’s strengths.

However looking deeper I realised I had come into this with a mindset that this group of people would never be able to perform and grow as a group just because they physically were very limited in what activities they could do and because they would not be able to communicate and socialise with one another on anything more than a superficial level. I had been so narrow minded immediately placing this barrier on them that didn’t necessarily exist. However, I learnt that the non verbal communication and interaction that occurred between our group members probably bonded them more as a group then any amount of verbal communication could have. I learnt that no matter how limited one may be physically, engaging in an activity and getting joy from it is possible even if it means ninety percent of it is done with the help of someone else. And lastly a group can and will go as far as the therapist leading them is willing to take them.

And so the answer to my now seemingly stupid question on day 1 is: Giving them the chance to.