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Cerebral Palsy In The Spotlight!
Sunday, 19 April 2009
It is great that celebs are speaking out and raising awareness about disability...it is probably true that people seem to be able to relate more to high profile figures than members of their own community, so by talking about disability and how it affects families, is only going to help people understand and show compassion.
CEREBRAL PALSY FACTS
It is the most common form of disability in children
Around one in every 400 babies in Britain are born with it each year
The incidence rate increases to one in 20 for babies with a birth weight under 1500g
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7988219.stm
High profile names can help raise awareness of a disease or condition, and bring it under the spotlight.
This video series talks to those in the public eye about their personal reasons for speaking out.
Football star Phil Neville speaks out about his daughter, Isabella's, cerebral palsy. He talks about the challenges and rewards of family life.
He shares his joy when she took her first steps, despite the doctor's odds.
Five years ago, Isabella was born ten weeks prematurely, weighing 3lb 3oz (1kg 445g). She spent her first few weeks of life fighting for life in a special care baby unit.
Isabella survived, but at 18 months she was diagnosed with cerebral palsy - a disability caused by damage to the brain before or during birth.
One of the reasons this is a great example is because it highlights the different levels of cerebral palsy quite well, here is a child with CP that can walk, obviously Deion has CP and is a wheelchair user, so even though the level of physical limitation may be different, what a family has to go through is largely similar.
19 April 2009 at 10:18
I agree with you, it's good that celebrities are using their status to bring awareness to stuff like this. :)
19 April 2009 at 12:20
It should not take a celebrity to highlight disability, I do understand your point but average people live with it every day and get no recognition.
19 April 2009 at 15:13
whatever it takes to get people to have a better understanding of this disability is a good thing in my opinion....I totally agree with you...great post!
m :)
xoxo
19 April 2009 at 15:17
yeah, if the end result if positive, it doesn't matter who brings it to attention...i live this life too, it goes largely ignored I agree, but so does all aspects of motherhood I feel. If i was a celeb, i would be raising as much awareness as I could...
19 April 2009 at 16:31
this is an interesting topic. i do agree that the more awareness that is brought to disability, illness, etc, the better. i don't understand why it takes a high profile case to get people's attention, though.
i would be interested to know if when gordon brown's son was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, if more attention was brought to the disease?
another thought provoking post from our girl, sally!
19 April 2009 at 18:22
Fantastic post and you are so right, sadly, people tend to turn to celebrity before turning to their own inner circles.
thankfully, there are celebrities that do come forward.
19 April 2009 at 20:52
Hi Sally, awareness is key. Sadly there are thousands of kids out there like your son who don't have celebs for parents. They're just as important!
Hugs back to you!!
20 April 2009 at 01:15
It is great that celebrities use their celebrity to make people aware, but I also agree that it should not take celebrities. We as average people should acknowledge the troubles our fellow average people go through. I work with several children with disabilities and I have few fellow workers that acknowledge they are in the building! I just wish everyone would help each other!
20 April 2009 at 06:17
Go ahead and shoot me. I tagged you with a meme on my blog.
20 April 2009 at 09:12
information from whatever source is important as it brings awareness to a subject that would otherwise be unknown.
As our culture looks trowards celebrities as creatures of interest. We tend to pay more attension to people who live their lifes in the spotlight and therefore they tend to use this platform to show us things that we might other wouldnt give our attention to.
Is this right? Probably not, but the average person doenst get the opportunity to learn about these things in our local community. Mainly due to the lack of interaction of people who suffer from this condition. On an average day how many people do you come across that you know special needs?
Saying that, their could be more representation on TV, in our soaps, TV drama and advertising media.
Good post Sally..