Cerebral Palsy equipment and accessories including wheelchairs, scooters,
standers, walkers, computers, seating, car seats, braces and dogs.

Wheelchairs & Scooters

When purchasing a wheelchair, parents should always seek guidance from the child’s physical therapist, physiatrist, or his orthopedist. Many pediatric hospitals have wheelchair clinics where physical therapists, rehabilitation engineers, and physicians come together to discuss the family’s and the child’s situation and decide what type of chair will best meet the needs of the child, the family and, where appropriate, the school. Then they can advise the parents accordingly.
One should never walk into a medical supply store and tell a salesperson that they would like to purchase a wheelchair, because even the most well-intentioned salespeople have received little training in assessing the child’s needs. We will be including several links to wheelchair websites at the bottom of this section. Some of them have places within the site where you can fill in criteria and they will recommend, based on what you enter, chairs that will fit your needs. They also have phone numbers where you can speak to a customer service person.

Three factors must be examined before purchasing a wheelchair for your child:

  • the child’s need for postural control and support
  • the child’s ability to push his or her own chair
  • the need for any adaptive devices

In addition to these issues that directly affect the child, it is also important to consider the settings where the wheelchair will be used: the family’s home and the child's school. This will determine how important it is to have a lightweight chair and will have a bearing on the size of the chair purchased. For instance, a chair to be used in a rural environment, where there are no sidewalks or paved streets, needs to be extremely stable; in this example, small-wheeled wheelchairs, which are difficult to push across gravel and loose dirt, are to be avoided.

The availability of service and repairs should also be considered. Although manual wheelchairs need repair less often than power chairs, parts of the wheelchair will eventually wear out or break and will need to be replaced.

Some manufacturers now make "Growth chairs" or chairs with "growth kits" allow adjustments to be made to the wheelchair to accommodate a growing child, such as replaceable components that can be converted from smaller to larger sizes. This option can be an economical way to stretch the length of time between purchases of a new chair.

The Wheelchair Site refers to itself as an "Independent Consumers Guide to Wheelchairs, Scooters & Accessories." This site provides links to several manufacturers and distributors offering a variety of wheelchair information. The Wheelchair Information Guide states that it is an "Independent guide on how to find the right wheelchair for you." This site also links to a variety of manufacturers.

http://www.wheelchair-guide.net/

http://www.usatechguide.org/techguide.php?vmode=1&catid=123

http://www.thewheelchairsite.com/pediatric-wheelchairs.aspx

http://www.thewheelchairsite.com/search.aspx?keywords=pediatric+wheelchairs&submit=Search

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Cerebral Palsy equipment and accessories including wheelchairs, scooters,
standers, walkers, computers, seating, car seats, braces and dogs.