Yorkshire Children's Physiotherapy have provided a professional and supportive physio service for our child who was recovering from a serious car accident. Sam has improved dramatically not just physically, but he is now calmer and more responsive to everyone around him. This has been essential in helping us to be positive and for our family as a whole to feel confident about the future.
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Progress and Outcome Measures

Setting goals and regularly evaluating them are essential components of physiotherapy rehabilitation. By continuously measuring any changes and improvements in a child’s level of pain, their movement, strength and flexibility, functional ability and behaviour, a clear pathway of progress can be charted and this can help to choose the correct method of physiotherapy treatment and focus more specifically on achieving appropriate goals in the most appropriate timeframe.

Child learningThe goals and measurement tools chosen should reflect the things that a child and their parents / carers feel are important to them – children are likely to make the greatest gains when therapy and the related goals concentrate on activities that are meaningful to them and that they enjoy, and those that will make a difference in their lives. Goals should therefore be specific, measurable and individual, focusing on aspects relevant to the child and their family.

In physiotherapy, in order to evaluate changes and design a rehabilitation programme that achieves all of these things, we use specific measurement tools that help to identify progress made and appropriate forms of treatment. Each child will have specific needs and specific difficulties and therefore the measurement tools chosen must reflect these factors.

Not only is it important for a physiotherapist to measure the progress of a child under their care, but it can help families and carers involved in a child’s rehabilitation to see and understand the changes that are taking place as a result of their physiotherapy.

At Yorkshire Children’s Physiotherapy, our clinicians use a number of outcome measures and tools to evaluate progress, depending upon each child’s condition and their needs. We are committed to providing a high-quality and evidence-based service in order that we achieve the best for the children in our care, and base our physiotherapy programmes on sound clinical reasoning.

Examples of paediatric physiotherapy outcome measures include:

  • Modified Ashworth Scale to measure muscle tone and spasticity
  • MRC Scale / Oxford Grading of muscle strength / power
  • GMFM (Gross Motor Function Measure) used for children with Cerebral Palsy
  • Alberta Infant Motor Scale measures gross motor maturation of infants

Please ask your physiotherapist about measurement tools and how they can help to illustrate the progress that your child is making with physiotherapy rehabilitation. It is important to us that you as parents and carers are involved in your child’s therapy and are part of their progress.