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What works
These are the interventions that clinical guidelines recommend and that controlled trials support. For most children they will do more than anything on the emerging therapies page — and they are the first thing a family should be certain is in place.
The child practises the thing they are trying to learn, often enough for it to matter, towards a goal that means something to them. Treatments that bypass that — passive handling, generic exercise, an infusion with no therapy attached — have consistently performed worse.
Specific practice produces specific gains. A child improves at what they practise. Rehabilitation does not deliver broad, global transformation — which is worth knowing before judging any treatment that promises it.
Early detection and early intervention
The single highest-value thing in this whole field, and the one least often discussed in clinics selling treatment. Cerebral palsy can be identified in the first months of life, and that is when therapy does the most.
General Movements Assessment, HINE, early MRI, infant-led therapy
Established careGoal-directed, task-specific training
Not a brand of therapy but the principle underneath the ones that work: the child practises the actual task they are trying to learn, with enough repetition to matter.
Goals–Activity–Motor Enrichment, functional training
Established careConstraint-induced therapy and bimanual training
For a child who uses one hand much more than the other, these are among the best-evidenced interventions in paediatric neurology — and both work, for different things.
CIMT, modified CIMT, HABIT, hand–arm bimanual intensive training
Established carePhysiotherapy and strength training
Well supported when it is built around function and genuinely loaded — much weaker when it is passive stretching and generic exercise.
Functional physiotherapy, progressive resistance training, fitness
Established careOccupational therapy
The discipline that works on what the child actually does all day — dressing, eating, writing, playing, getting through a school morning.
Daily living skills, self-care, school participation, adaptive equipment
Established careSpeech, language and communication
For a child who cannot speak clearly, giving them a way to communicate is among the most consequential interventions available — and the fear that it will stop them talking is unfounded.
Speech and language therapy, AAC, communication aids
Established careSpasticity and tone management
Medical and surgical treatment of tone, which works best when it is tied to a functional goal rather than to a number on a tone scale.
Botulinum toxin, orthoses, serial casting, oral medication, baclofen pump, selective dorsal rhizotomy
In clinical trialsTechnology-assisted rehabilitation
Useful mainly as a way of delivering more practice, not as a treatment in its own right — and that distinction decides whether it is worth the money.
Robotic gait training, body-weight supported treadmill, FES, virtual reality
In clinical trialsNamed physiotherapy approaches
Families are usually asked to choose between brands. The evidence says the brand matters far less than whether the session is active, goal-directed and repeated often enough.
Bobath / NDT, MEDEK, MAES, Anat Baniel Method, Vojta, conductive education, patterning
In clinical trialsSensory therapies
Two things are sold under one word. Manualised Ayres Sensory Integration has been tested in trials; the sensory add-ons sold around it mostly have not.
Ayres Sensory Integration, sensory-based interventions, weighted vests, auditory integration, listening programmes
Established careVision and cerebral visual impairment
The most commonly missed problem in children with brain injury. A child who cannot interpret what they see is often described as inattentive, uncooperative or more delayed than they are.
CVI, cortical visual impairment, functional vision assessment, visual habilitation
Once these are in place, the question of newer treatments becomes a different and much calmer one: emerging therapies · how to judge them.