Miscellaneous footage of disabled children. Tape A.

Recorded in the Leon Gillis Unit at Queen Mary's Hospital, Roehampton, this tape is one of a series of six video compilations and consists of sequences of amateur footage of children with varying kinds of physical disability affecting their limbs. Mostly the children have shortened arms or legs or both arms and legs and many of the children featured were affected by the drug thalidomide. Most likely intended for occupational therapy purposes, the recordings show how the various children can best move around and manipulate everyday tools, both naturally and with prosthetic limbs. The quality of the tape is in places quite poor with the image faded and tape signals frequently interrupted; some parts of the tape have sound, others are silent. Despite the low recording quality, these tapes present a rare and unstaged insight into occupational therapy for young children with limb deficiencies.