The Champion Centre
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We provide high quality family/Whanau based early intervention services for families who have children with multifaceted development delay. We educate about early intervention and act with parents of the children with development delay as advocates for adequate and appropriate community services for them and their chidren.
• Since its incorporation in 1989, the Champion Centre has made strong inroads into developing world-renowned programmes and services to assist children with various special needs including Down syndrome, premature birth, cerebral palsy, and traumatic brain injury.
• The Champion Centre is one of the country’s foremost early intervention services for infants and young children with development delay.
• The Champion Centre is recognised internationally for its innovation and successful programmes.
• Highly qualified personnel involve children from birth to school age with special needs and their families/whanau in early intervention, educating them to cope better with their child’s special needs, and to help their child assimilate into society.
Canterbury Earthquake Update: Our centre has been checked and cleared and we are open to families from Monday 14 March.
Winning a donation from Sovereign will help us achieve:
It would help to support the children to participate in the Learning Through Music Programme.
The Learning through Music Programme at the Champion Centre is not about performing music for its own sake. It is about harnessing the power of musical expression in both children and their parents to build on, and integrate, other therapies through activities that are fun and natural, and that promote the emergence of each child’s true potential.
Music has a power over the human brain that researchers are only just beginning to understand. At the Champion Centre we use the power of music over the brain to engage children’s attention, help them follow instructions, and to guide them from one activity to the next.
The most authentic way to articulate the uniqueness of the Champion Centre music programme is as follows: The Child must be understood within his or her context. The elements of the developing child are multi-faceted. The clinical practice is also multi-faceted. The underpinning principles of partnership, working in teams and working toward inclusion guide practice. The music philosophy recognises that each child has an inherent musicality, regardless of disability, and reflects a universal sensitivity to music and its various elements.
Specifically:
• We recognise that a musically nurturing environment can provide ongoing, insightful, caring support for parents, providing musical strategies to help them interact playfully with their child.
• We recognise that music is a powerful non-verbal form of communication which can help children to feel included and safe
• We recognise that musical experiences are multi-modal, involving auditory, visual, cognitive, affective and motor systems
• We recognise that music can offer opportunities for playfulness, warmth, humour, and love and give the child the crucial experience of success, thus helping to build self-esteem
Antoinette is four and a half years old and has Rett syndrome, a rare genetic condition. She is the youngest of four children. Music plays a big part in Antoinette’s life as a therapeutic aid. She loves catchy tunes and, although she has limited use of her legs, her feet move in time with the music. It is amazing how the right music can transform her from screaming to laughter in a matter of seconds. Music and singing along also make it much easier to perform many activities, particularly her Physio exercise. Julie holds her hands and has Antoinette dancing around the room, when normally she can barely walk.
The Learning Through Music Programme course costs $1100 per child per annum.
Our details:
| Registration No: | CC 22708 |
| Region: | Canterbury/South Canterbury |
| Category: | Children's disability support |
| Contact Person: | Belinda Wilkinson (Funding Administrator) |
| Address: | Private Bag 4708 Christchurch |
| Telephone: | (03)383 6867 |
| Email: | funding@championcentre.org.nz |
| Website: | www.championcentre.org.nz |
| No. helped nationally: | 190 children and families in Christchurch |
| No. helped per project: | 190 |
| Existing sponsors or funders: | Todd Foundation |
