A kind-hearted, talented woman from Da Nang has honourly been awarded a Certificate of Creative Labour from the Viet Nam Labour Federation for creating a special toolkit for helping children strengthen their fine motor skills.

Ms Linh helping children with mental illness strengthen their fine motor skills though the use of toolkit

Accordingly, the product has been highly appreciated for its great benefits to patients with autism and mental retardation.

The product is the brainchild of Cao Thi Dieu Linh, who is a rehabilitation technician at the Pediatrics - Language Therapy Ward of the Da Nang Rehabilitation Hospital in Ngu Hanh Son District’s My An Ward. 

In fact, children with disabilities not only suffer from language dysfunction but they also find it quite difficult to move physically.

Still worse, the asynchronous combination of legs, hands, eyes, and the body as a whole, may affect the activities of daily living, cognitive skills and the ability to integrate into the community.

Autistic children suffer from such impairments as social interactions, language and communication skills, cognitive and psychomotor skills.

Ms Linh, with her great love and profound sympathy for these disadvantaged children and her significant efforts, has successfully created a toolkit with the strong desire to help children maintain the functions of senses in a normal manner.

This toolkit features a combination of therapeutic and group activities. Accordingly, a technician has direct interaction with many children with mental disabilities. In the kit, there are 6 pairs of tubes of many different sizes and colours, along with a big basket containing small plastic balls in various colours and sizes. Technicians can ask two or more children, at the same time, to pick up and place the balls into the tubes.

“When using this kit, the children are actively engaged in various activities of touching, picking, and especially enjoying fun, hereby inspiring to participate in the treatment process in a more active manner”, Ms Linh said.

According to this talented technician, the most important step is to evaluate and classify the children with mental disabilities into different groups so that the technicians can give suitable instructions to them during the utilising of the highly effective kit.

Mr Pham Duc Quang, the Trade Union Organisation of the Rehabilitation Hospital eagerly revealed that 84% of the participating children showed their outstanding overall improvement after 3-month using the toolkit.

Ms Linh’s creation is highly appreciated for shortening the time taken to train the disadvantaged children, and it can be widely applied in the treatment of other children at different levels of disabilities in the coming time.

To date, the use of the toolkit has helped the Rehabilitation Hospital save nearly 300 million in total.

In particular, the most special benefit this product brings to the children with mental illness is to help them enhance their physical strength, stir excitement amongst them and promote their language expression.

Regardless of the difficulties, and with their great efforts and special love for these misfortune children, the trainers wholeheartedly help autistic children get overcome their aggression, learn to rein in disruptive behaviour, and enjoy a much more positive relationship with others around. Thanks to this, many of them have shown their outstanding improvements in their physical and mental progress. This positive sign, therefore, helps to ease the burden of caring these disadvantaged children, and motivate them to integrate into the community.