Visual impairment and cerebral palsy

Cerebral palsy (CP) is a condition that mainly affects movement. It is caused by damage to different parts of the brain. The damage may occur either before birth, at birth or in early childhood. Some children have only a mild form while others are more severely affected.

Although cerebral palsy mainly causes difficulty with movement, other conditions may also occur. This is because other parts of the brain may also be affected. This can lead to learning difficulties, epilepsy, difficulty with hearing and visual impairment. The visual impairment that occurs in cerebral palsy is called Cerebral Visual Impairment (CVI) (also referred to as Cortical Visual Impairment.)

Cerebral Visual Impairment (CVI) is a condition where some of the special 'vision' parts of the brain and its connections are damaged. This causes visual impairment even though the eyes are normal. Often children with CVI actually have good visual acuity but can not 'make sense' of what they see.

Many children with cerebral palsy will have visual impairment. It is often difficult to tell if a child has problems seeing because of other problems with communication, movement or learning difficulties.

At Meldreth Manor, we have specially trained teachers who work with our visually impaired students to stimulate the parts of the brain that deal with interpreting what the eye is seeing. Our lead teacher on visual impairment is getting very encouraging results from working with ultra violet light and fluorescence as a means of stimulating the brain to respond to colour input. We also use colour tents to focus students on using their sight, however little sight they may have.

Read more about our multi-sensory curriculum.