Helen Enns, Founder
Helen Enns has been physiotherapist for over 40 years mostly working as a pediatric PT since she graduated with her Diploma of Physiotherapy from SAIT in Adelaide, South Australia.
Her love for working with children led her to Bangladesh where she worked in the Salvation Army’s Handicapped Children’s Centre in the capital of Dhaka. It was there that she met her husband Rob (from Saskatchewan) and the original 18 month-long term stretched to eight years as they began raising their family in Bangladesh.
On returning to Winnipeg, she completed her bachelors degree of physiotherapy at the University of Manitoba and also became a Canadian citizen. She has worked in a wide variety of programs and settings in Australia, Bangladesh, Nepal, Egypt, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and now has been in children’s work in Alberta since 1992.
Helen’s passion has always been to seek to find best practices of therapeutic options that support the whole family – including children and their parents, and to help them access valuable early intervention support as soon as the need is identified.
Helen loves working with children with cerebral palsy and this led her to learning more about conductive education (CE) as a successful approach of choice for these children. She visited several programs around the world and now incorporates these principles into her work. In 1994, she helped start the P.A.C.E. (Principles from the Approach of Conductive Education) Rehabilitation program for children with motor disabilities which is now called Pacekids Programs. This program has grown over 25 years to become one of the larger and well respected programs supporting preschool children in Calgary.
Another area of interest has been working with children with developmental coordination disorder or DCD (this used to be called “clumsy child syndrome”). She learnt the importance of all children learning to crawl, spend time on their tummies as babies to develop bilateral coordination skills. This therapy approach came in a program package called “Move to Learn”. She attended training for this approach in Fiji and has then taught this through workshops to many aides, families and children to help enhance the children’s gross motor development.
She led the “Let’s Grow” parent/child group (for preschool children with special needs) in the High River Parent Link Centre for over five years and loved the opportunity to see children and parents grow together.
In 2015, when a new group of Helen’s PT clients’ parents met in her basement in Calgary, they expressed their desire for more intensive early intervention programming, which is how Step by Step was born.
Physiotherapy is truly Helen’s passion and being able to help children develop their motor skills and independence and seeing families and support workers learn how to best help and support these children gives her tremendous satisfaction and much joy.
