GoBabyGo is a transformative program for children with motor and cognitive developmental delays.
The program—a collaboration between physical therapy students and community volunteers—uses donated vehicles and funds to supply design teams with the tools necessary for custom builds. Toyota provides students with the base-model vehicles, plus engineers from the company facilitate customization with clients. The Purdue School of Engineering and Technology and the Indiana University School of Medicine also serve as valued partners.
Students evaluate every child’s needs and work with their families to custom design a vehicle to meet specific physical therapy goals.
By receiving adapted battery-powered cars and four-wheelers, participants are able to gain mobility in their environment.
Recipients have the opportunity to operate the assisted devices at the Children's Museum of Indianapolis annually.
Description of the video:
Once a kiddo has been accepted to get a Go Baby Go! car, we sit down with a team of mechanical engineering students, physical therapy students and occupational therapy students, and what they do is they see what their mobility looks like, what their specific goals are from a mobility perspective, and then they help decide what modifications need to be made to that car.
Then we have a huge build day. We've purchased all of the materials that we need and then we have a team for each car that needs to be modified that actually does the modifications for that vehicle. We pick a vehicle that is specific to the child that we're building it for. We pick it depending upon how big the kid is, how much the child weighs, what their goals are, how many modifications we're going to make. We add stickers. We pick their favorite colors. We add something that makes it really personal so that when they see their car, A) they know it's theirs and B) they want to be in it.
Then we have a huge play day where all of the kids get their cars. They get the opportunity to learn how to drive them. They get to practice driving them.
Bo qualified for the Go Baby Go! because he has a diagnosis of Down Syndrome, which makes him have different abilities. He has low muscle tone and some developmental delays that go along with that diagnosis. Bo's car was adapted for him. They put a step on the side so it's easy for him to get into. Bo likes to open and close doors and drawers. That's like his favorite thing to do at home, so they made sure that the door opened and closed on the side it was easy for him to do.
Once a kid receives their Go Baby Go! car, they're basically a part of our family forever. So, if they need updates to their car, if they need modifications in the future, we absolutely can work with families to do that.
It means a lot to us that Bo was able to be part of this program because you want your child to be able to enjoy the things that typical children do. So, to see him get so excited, it was great.
