Matthew Balbarino, Miranda Gazda, Carmelita Graymountain, Courtney Norberto

Sponsor or Client: 

Title:

The Reduction and Prevention of At-Home Fall Risk Hazards for Individuals with Developmental Disabilities

Abstract:

Our goal is to provide resources for continuous education to prevent and reduce fall risk hazards within the homes of individuals with developmental disabilities through the Over the Rainbow Butterfly Garden. Children between the age of 1 and 4 years are leading first for cause of death with unintentional accidents and fifth for children under 1 year of age (CDC, 2018, as cited in Moridi et al., 2021). The World Health Organization (WHO) states individuals 65 years and older have a 28-35% fall incident rate and individuals 70 years and older have a 32-42% fall incident rate (Huang et al.,2021). The Over the Rainbow Butterfly Garden has a two-winged mission, “The first wing joyfully awards scholarships to students in need of speech and occupational therapy and the second wing of our non-profit involves providing in-home care to adults and children with developmental disabilities (OTRBG, 2022). Our intervention supports the second winged mission by providing continuous education to direct caregivers. Our objective is to increase knowledge on identifying hazards, providing resources, and increasing self-efficacy to reduce and prevent falls within the home. Our activities include an interactive drawing for direct caregivers of Over the Rainbow Butterfly Garden to draw an outline of the homes they are caring for and draw common walking patterns through the most used rooms to identify obstacles. Additional activities include a checklist for continuous monitoring of fall risk hazards. The end of our intervention will include a post test to determine the effectiveness of the intervention.