Quick Tip

For about a dollar and a half you can buy lycra fabric book covers that are meant to stretch over text books. They also make great covers for most standard wheelchair head rests! A fun way to color coordinate, cover up that hole that's been worn in the headrest cover or just to brighten things up. You can find them just about anywhere school supplies are sold. I bought the pink one currently in use to cover up a head rest hole at CVS for a dollar thirty nine.

New Headrest for When Nothing Else Works

I ran into the PT in charge of the wheelchair clinic for my school today and told her of a problem one of the students in my class is having with falling out of and behind his headrest. She recommended I check out the new i2i head rest.

Although it is not the teacher's role to recommend a headrest, the teacher (me) and classroom staff are the ones (after the parent) who are going to have to deal with the repercussions of a student having the wrong head rest. If a student is constantly hooking his or her head around or behind a headrest then teaching time is lost to re-positioning and alternative communication becomes impossible, not to mention how much impact there is on feeding and personal care.

This new i2i headrest received high reviews from Home Health Products Reader Reviews and was designed by a PT who was actively working with students. One review describes her early efforts with splinting material and foam pads (scrool down to see it).

The headrest can even be made with built in switches for communication, environmental access or powered mobility.

P.S. I am a huge fan of built in switches for communication, environmental or computer access as well as for powered mobility. This is for a variety of reasons. The first is that it ends "where does the switch go?" syndrome. The second is that it is a visible reminder that the student can and should be accessing everything that can be accessed and the third is that eliminates a step of setting things up, which always seems to take too long.