Activities

Patientcare Clubfoot

Treatment of a child with a clubfoot at our Clubfoot Clinic

To guide a child through treatment in the best possible way, we always first invite children and parents to come to our Clubfoot Clinic. This is particularly important as many parents cannot read or write. During their visit to the Clubfoot Clinic, we help map out a child’s needs and explain to the parents what each step consists of. We provide support in obtaining the right paperwork and coordinating the three different steps of Ponseti treatment (cast, tenotomy and brace). After the initial surgery, we also support with opening the cast and fitting the first Ponseti brace and follow-up checks to see if the foot has still retained the correct correction.

Guiding parents and a child with a clubfoot remotely

We also help parents remotely, referring them to the right medical care provider and, when necessary, providing aids.

Supporting care providers who treat children with a clubfoot

We also regularly receive requests from care providers in other districts/provinces of Indonesia. For example, we worked with doctors in Kalimantan, where it is difficult to obtain well-fitting braces. Now, with each new request, they send us the child’s information so that we can send the right brace to the doctor for further Ponseti treatment.

Ponseti-brace

We are a brace centre and coordinate this phase of care using different types of braces. We receive from committed orthopaedists -from NL- second-hand braces, collaborate with organisations supplying braces and have our own designed and produced mid-bars.

Access to the Ponseti brace is difficult throughout Indonesia, and we are committed to making this final stage of Ponseti treatment possible for everyone and everywhere.

Self-designed brace

To provide better care for children with a clubfoot during treatment, we have been actively producing our own parts for the brace stage for several years now. Since 2022, we started designing a 3D-printed model in collaboration with students from the Hague University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands.

Guidance during the brace phase at our Clubfoot Clinic

Every week we host our Clubfoot Clinic. During this day, children come for brace checks. We are committed to seeing and checking children four times a year for four years to ensure the feet stay corrected and the brace is worn.

Guidance during the brace phase remotely

We also remotely provide braces to parents and support them on the use of the brace, during the total period of the brace phase.

Medical Trainings

Training

We provide training across Bali to midwives and nurses in the field, as well as to midwives and nurses’ students through our partnerships with universities. Our training focuses on early detection and treatment of clubfoot and provide in-depth information on how to detect a child with a clubfoot, the treatment of a clubfoot and the information that is important to parents.

Follow-up

After the intensive initial period, we also stay in direct contact with midwives in the long-term. We coordinate, communicate with and visit the midwives and accompany the new children identified by these midwives who need help.

Collaboration

Together with several foundations, we work to improve the recognition and treatment of children with a clubfoot. We are in close contact with various foundations, making patient referrals easier and sharing relevant knowledge faster.

We work with care providers on a pathway in which children are diagnosed, referred, treated and supervised from different disciplines as early as possible (within the first year of life) until treatment is fully completed.

We collaborate with different government institutions, such as hospitals, specialist organisations and universities. With these institutions, we have collaboration agreements so that we actually make a difference in the long-term with regard to early detection of a child with a disability with a special focus on the condition clubfoot.

Improving Early Detection

An important part of our mission is to improve general early detection. In particular we target: the midwife’s assistants at the baby health clinics; the social workers in the villages; and women’s groups in the village that meet regularly for education and information. Alongside this we work closely with the village chief and relevant officials and we will provide home visits to all children with disabilities in the village.

This is supported by our targeted printed materials, including a parent booklet and posters.

To reach parents in a large district, we also run a specific Indonesian Clubfoot Facebook page. With our online platform, we give parents more ‘know how’ about what a clubfoot is, inform them what the options are and connect them with each other.

Home visits

The Field Team, together with the local medical care provider, visits children with disabilities at home. An optimal treatment, guidance and rehabilitation plan is drawn up in consultation with the local medical care provider and the parents. Where possible, these children are referred within our specialised network. We continue to coordinate with local medical providers to see if any questions arise over time.

We can also provide children with intensive and/or longer-term physiotherapy. We do this in collaboration with our partner foundation.