DAD gets the Love Activity treatment thanks to North West member volunteers led by Karen Martin

Despite the hot weather, the national disappointment of not quite making that elusive World Cup final and the competition of the men’s final at Wimbledon, a sterling group of members, led by North West ERN Chair Karen Martin, helped promote physiotherapy at Warrington’s Disability Awareness Day (DAD) on Sunday 15 July.

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Karin Martin with Mayor

Thousands come along to this show every year and 2018 was no exception. To encourage visitors to their stand both young and old, Karen and her team organised some great activities. Children took part in a skeleton competition, where they had to name as many bones as they could. They were asked questions such as: why is being fit is good for bones? Has mum/ dad/ grandad ever broken a bone, what happened, did they get physio, what was that like?

The team also used the " Virtuali-tee " app. Parents were asked to hold up a t-shirt with infographics on it and the physios showed the children on an ipad what their parents insides looked like – they were able to see their parent’s guts or heart pumping or lungs breathing in and out.

Commenting on the interaction with families Karen Martin said: ‘There were lots of gasps of amazement from children. It helped us to talk about why physiotherapists are interested in blood, lungs, cholesterol and fitness so that we could talk about the Love Activity message. I was also delighted to be interviewed on the day talking about physiotherapy with two local radio stations.

The leaflets provided by the CSP, particularly the Love Activity, Hate Exercise? bookmarks were well received. We also invited people to write down what they discussed with their physiotherapist on the stand so that people could see all the things that physiotherapists can help with.’

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