VISIBLE: Vision Intervention for Seeing Impaired Babies: Learning through Enrichment

Does your infant have a high chance of cerebral palsy and have difficulties visually fixing or following objects?

VISIBLE is a novel, early intervention randomised controlled trial (RCT), to address the gap in rehabilitative interventions of infants with brain damage and vision impairment. Infants with a high risk of cerebral palsy (CP) and cerebral visual impairment (CVI)  at 3-6 months will be enrolled and randomised into a 6-month early intervention program or standard care.

What does the study involve?

The parent-led, daily intervention activities will focus on environmental enrichment for your infant.  You will be supported by an experienced therapist in your own home on targeted vision-aware developmental goals for your child. Behavioural assessments will be utilized to evaluate the program's efficacy on vision, motor, and general developmental function.

The infants will be followed up until 12 months corrected age to assess the effectiveness of the VISIBLE program on infants on vision awareness, motor, upper limb and cognitive development. 

Why participate in this research?

• Be supported by an expert multi-disciplinary team to provide therapy to your child.
• Enrich your child’s vision and development through daily vision aware developmental goals.
• Provide therapy to your child in the comfort of your own home.
• Contribute to research that assists young children in their visual development.

Who participated in this research?

• Parents of infants who are less than 7 months of age (corrected for prematurity)
• Parents of infants who were at a high risk of cerebral palsy and cerebral visual impairment.
• If you live within 150km of our study sites in Queensland (Brisbane, Townsville, Cairns), Perth, Western Australia, Cincinati, Ohio, Triblisi Georgia, Colombo, Sri Lanka or Pisa, Italy.

Contact details

For more information, please contact  Laura Gascoigne-Pees.

Ph: (07) 3069 7370 or E: qedincp@uq.edu.au 

Ethics

The study has been approved by the Children’s Health Queensland Hospital and Health Service Human Research Ethics Committee and began recruitment of 32 infants across the five sites.

This project is funded by Cerebral Palsy Alliance research grant.

Chief Investigators: Prof. Roslyn Boyd, Prof. Andrea Guzzetta, Prof. Iona Novak, Dr Cathy Morgan, Dr Alison Salt, Prof. Glen Gole, Dr Swetha Philip, Dr Kerstin Pannek.