In English

Jasny Cel” [‘Clear Goal’] - the Podlasie Children’s Cerebral Palsy Association has been operating in Białystok for 13 years. In 2005 the Association established a Non-Public Healthcare Centre known as the Multidisciplinary Treatment and Rehabilitation Centre for Children with CP. The centre, located at 4 Bukowskiego St. in Białystok, offers comprehensive treatment and education opportunities to children suffering the effects of CNS damages; it also functions as a day-care centre.

Cerebral palsy is a group of disorders that mainly affect a person’s ability to move and maintain balance and posture, but may also be accompanied by other conditions resulting from disturbed psychomotor development including mental retardation, learning disabilities, seizures, or vision, hearing, and speech impairments. Children receive professional treatment involving individual or group therapies recommended by the centre’s medical staff, including specialised therapies such NDT, SI or the World Experience Room. Depending on individual needs, our patients may also benefit from music therapy, psychotherapy, speech therapy, or get massage sessions. Education is an integral part of our multidisciplinary rehabilitation program: the Centre runs a special needs kindergarten and school where kids with CP may fulfill their schooling obligation.

Main approach that we have adopted is CE (Conductive Education) – a treatment that considers the individual as a unified whole and provides an overall, holistic intervention and provides possibilities for children to practice emerging skills not only in specific learning situations but in the many inter-connecting, in-between situations of which life consists. With its aim of unified treatment, CE model is interdisciplinary rather multidisciplinary: the disciplines merge and supplement one another and a specially trained group of professionals are responsible for the planning and implementation of the whole process.

The Multidisciplinary Treatment and Rehabilitation Centre for Children with CP is a non-profit, unpaid day-care facility whose financing is based mainly on the National Health Fund, the City Hall subsidies, education subvention, funds from the State Fund of Rehabilitation of Disabled Persons (PFRON), 1% tax donation scheme and gifts. Our kids are divided into 7 groups according to age and level of disability. At the moment, we provide day care to 35 children aged 3-15 and we also serve about 40 other kids from Białystok and its vicinity, who receive treatment in outpatient setting and are dropped off by their parents or guardians to get a particular, arranged treatment.

Disabled children also need to belong. They need to develop their interests, they need the sense of accomplishment, they need to have fun. We do everything to satisfy these needs: the kids may participate in art therapy, play Boccia, learn through drama, take part in fine/applied arts competitions, enjoy themed events and parties or guest performances by a theatre; they also frequently go out with their therapists to eat out, do shopping, watch a play in the theatre and visit other public places where they can test their skills in practice.

Our mission is to help children with CP embrace opportunities and maximize their potential and to prepare them for independent adult life. We want to help their parents live a normal life. We want to make a difference.