Regional Center for Intensive Pediatric Rehabilitation

Senterets task is to offer various rehabilitation and training programs for children and young people with different forms of brain injury/functional impairment, conduct research, professional development, and knowledge sharing. The treatment programs usually consist of intensive periods with group sessions in Kristiansand and follow-up training at home in the child’s familiar environment. Between group sessions, we are available to provide advice and guidance to you parents and to the local support system. Our intensive programs are a supplement to the regular follow-up that the children receive from the municipality and their local specialist healthcare services.

We emphasize that training with children should be targeted, play-based, and enjoyable. Activities are adapted to each child's functional level and training goals. Goals for training and stimulation are developed in collaboration between parents and professionals. An overarching goal is that children will develop new skills, enjoyment of activity, a positive self-esteem, resilience, and self-confidence. This happens as children encounter challenging, but also exciting and varied activities together with peers with disabilities. We try to find activities that each child finds so fun that completing the activity becomes a goal in itself. We believe this contributes to creating great motivation and high enjoyment of activity among the children.

As parents of children with disabilities, you have different and greater caregiving, upbringing, treatment, and "administrative" tasks than parents in general. We have found that many parents discover resources and coping mechanisms that make the overall burden manageable, but we also see that many of you are struggling and experiencing high levels of stress and strain. We are committed to assisting you in your coping efforts. We assess stress and strain, and offer reflective and support conversations.

Fjellvettregel nr. 5 states: "Listen to experienced mountain folk." The rule applies in most situations where we as humans move into partly new and demanding situations. There is good research to support the idea that parents of children with disabilities can greatly benefit from exchanging experiences with other parents. Many feel a unique sense of community with parents in similar situations. Parents often experience more equal roles than they often feel when interacting with healthcare professionals. Mutual encouragement and support between parents is readily available, and the threshold for asking for advice is low. The advice is often practical, given in everyday and understandable language, and is personal and experience-based. There is great insight into each other's emotional and practical situations, and parents often feel understood and that emotional reactions they have or have had are normalized. In line with this thinking, we facilitate experience sharing between you parents during your stay at RIB.

We must point out that we do not have the possibility of offering siblings a place, and that they can only, on rare occasions and by appointment, participate in the activities with the children in the group. If it is relevant for a respite carer/other family members by appointment to participate in selected parts of the program, their stay must be organised and covered in another way.

We work in a family-centered way and emphasize that you, the parents, are most important for your children's well-being and development. We focus on supporting you in mastering everyday challenges and the role of parenthood. This family-centered approach means that we assist you with knowledge of your child's strengths and areas of difficulty, and how you and local professionals can best promote your child's development. We believe that all children have great, untapped developmental potential.

We have great faith in the value of peer-to-peer experience sharing. This applies to experience sharing between the children/young people themselves, between you parents yourselves, and between you and your children. We therefore place great emphasis on creating good arenas and meeting places for this transfer of knowledge.

Our stimulation, training, and treatment approach is multidisciplinary. This means we base ourselves on knowledge from several fields, including child psychology, exercise science, physiotherapy science, pedagogy, medicine, and the field of disability. Our treatment team consists of experienced professionals from various professions: physiotherapist, occupational therapist, psychologist, special educator, and pediatrician. Our treatment offers are based on recognized and evidence-based methods. We have contact with national and international professional environments and strive to implement the latest and best knowledge in the services we provide to each child and to you as a family. Not least, we draw inspiration and knowledge from the internationally recognized CanChild environment (Read about them at www.CanChild.can). We continuously develop our treatment offers based on new knowledge, research results, and user experiences. Therefore, we reserve the right for changes in the treatment programs to occur.

All teaching and guidance takes place in Norwegian.

The child must be referred to RIB via the specialist health services. The referral must state which treatment options the child is being referred for. We would like the referral to include an updated description of the child and that copies of previous assessment reports are attached. It would be helpful if you, the parents, could send us information that may be relevant to how we should tailor and design a good offer for your child.

s.We accept referrals for all our habilitation services continuously. Referrals are assessed in accordance with the current deadlines, and we send responses to the referral to both parents/guardians and the referrer.

We are located in our own adapted premises at the hospital in Kristiansand. Here we have training, video conferencing, and meeting rooms, and we also have use of an adapted patient hotel, where families can stay during their visits.

RIB offers intensive habilitation services within specialist healthcare, and there is no participation fee. Reimbursement for travel via the most economical route can be applied for through Patient Travel (info www.pasientreiser.no or phone 91505515). Coverage of lost income for parents can be applied for in the form of training grants according to the Social Security Act §9-10 and §9-13.