Over the past four years, the team at Neurokinex and some of its young clients at Neurokinex Kids have taken part in a fun and festive Christmas card charity design competition.
All the children’s designs are put forward to a public vote with the winner’s design then made up into a Christmas card that is sold to help raise awareness and vital funds for the charity.
This year’s winning design
This year’s winning Neurokinex Kids Christmas card was designed by Jasper, eight, who also drew the winning design of the very first Neurokinex Christmas Card in 2018 when he was just four years old.
Jasper was the first paediatric client to attend Neurokinex aged just two in March 2016. Born fit and well, he contracted Hand, Foot & Mouth disease at a children’s party. A rare complication resulted in an enlarged heart and Jasper was admitted to hospital and put on life support. However, when the doctors brought him round, Jasper couldn’t move his legs: a blood clot had damaged his lower spinal cord and he was paralysed from the waist down.
After Jasper was discharged from Stoke Mandeville spinal care hospital in March 2016, his mum Kate started to look for specialist rehabilitation to give Jasper his best chance of recovery. She was initially recommended to visit the NeuroRecovery Network facility in Louisville and the family flew to the US in May 2015. At that time, the ground-breaking work being done in Louisville was only available at a select few NRN affiliated sites in America.
Luckily for Jasper, the NRN had just named the Neurokinex rehabilitation centre in Crawley as its first and only affiliate outside of the US, bringing this amazing treatment much closer to home. Kate flew the family home and Jasper started at Neurokinex. Two years later, in March 2018, Neurokinex opened Neurokinex Kids, a purpose-built activity gym upstairs at the main Neurokinex rehab centre to fully cater for their younger clients.
Not just for fun, but providing therapy too
Whilst designing the Christmas card is great festive fun for the kids, it’s also another opportunity to provide important therapy.
Neurokinex Kids delivers ground-breaking work and defies diagnoses, focusing above and below the child’s point of injury in a bid to stimulate sensation and rehabilitation. It looks more like a play centre than a therapy suite with its bright and cheerful set-up. Here, children aged six months to 12 years engage in specialist rehab therapy through play, largely unaware how hard they are working because they’re having so much fun.
Designing the Christmas cards works many different muscle groups for the children as part of their vital therapy and gives the opportunity to focus on something different. It builds engagement, strengthens their relationship with their trainers and helps their families ‘give back’ to 
Neurokinex Kids.
Last year, Ryan, eight, wowed everyone by using only his mouth and a paintbrush to create his design of a snowman. He did this at Neurokinex Kids as part of his ongoing therapy and was placed into a standing position to paint it, which made keeping his head in control even more challenging.
In 2019, aged just two, Ralph’s design of snowmen using his footprints was chosen as the winning picture. A charming card, it was poignant because when Ralph first arrived at Neurokinex his hips were out of alignment and his feet were twisted backwards – meaning his ‘side by side’ snowmen wouldn’t have been possible. This was because when Ralph was just two weeks old he suffered a spinal stroke which had caused damage to his spinal cord and left him paralysed from the waist down.
Raising vital funds
Each year the Neurokinex Christmas card raises awareness and vital funds for the charity. A pack of 10 cards costs £6.50 and you can buy them here https://neurokinex.org/christmas-cards/
