'Do It For Dan' Charity in Iceland, Formby

On Saturday 1st August, the Do It For Dan charity were in Iceland in Formby packing bags to help raise money for Dans Therapy Fund - www.doitfordan.org

Dans therapy fund was created to raise monies to fund trips to the Belgium ABR Centre for Daniel and his parents. Monies may also be used to fund supporting Therapy equipment for Daniel at home. Longer term plans, depending on funds raised, are to support and give ABR information to other parents and children with cerebral palsy. This could then develop into supporting others to get to the centre and learn ABR techniques.

Dans Story

Daniel Van der Velden was born on the 8th May 2004 and shortly diagnosed with dystonic quadriplegic cerebral palsy. This means he cannot talk,sit by himself or use his arms and legs independently. He was in hospital for the first three weeks of his life. He had to be tube fed through a nasal gastric tube until he was nine months old.

We discovered ABR Belgium in January 2011. The inventor of ABR Leonid Blyum finally helped us to understand Daniel's condition. He explained on his web site that most children's development in the GMFCS 5 category (which Dan is) will have plateaued at their peak function around 3.5 years. These children then tend to loose function from 9 plus years. He goes into great detail and theory using case studies to explain why the children change using ABR. As an Occupational therapist I had not come across such a holistic and comprehensive therapy with case evidence such as this before. It was a godsend. This subtle pressure based massage type therapy is aimed at improving inner core strength in the connective tissues which goes on to improve development. Our hope for Dan is that his head control; hand function and speech will improve. The closest centre to the UK is in Belgium. The ABR centre in Belgium trains us and then we have to apply the therapy on Dan for about two to three hours a day.

It is our goal to raise money to help pay for the visits. It costs around 1500 euros a visit, 4 times a year.

Please visit the website and donate what you can. Thankyou to everyone for the continuous help and support for Dan.

Please Like the Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/Daniel.V.D.Velden

Please visit the website: http://www.doitfordan.org/