Adapted Hanger

A young man I work with  appears to want to hang his jacket up with the other clients but he does not have the motor planning skills to attach a jacket to a small hook on the wall or use a hanger. I noticed that  in another program room, the manager had these attractive hooks attached to the wall that are easier to use.   The client can push the jacket's collar or a hood on top of the loops (shown in the photo). He bought them at Ikea.

(Please excuse the fact that this blog does not let me rotate the pictures.)

Below is my attempt to see if my client can attach his jacket using a bottle that has a nice wide opening to push the jacket collar onto. Fortunately the coat wrack is located in a little nook where few people will see my weird adaptation. I still had to use hand-over-hand training so that he grasps the collar with both hands, but there are very few steps involved in positioning and then pushing the collar downward. It stayed quite securely.

I made this adaptation by cutting below the bottle's handle so that I could slip the handle over the bar in the closet. Then I wrapped a fabric strand around the handle and bottle to hold it more securely in place.

I think that one major hurtle in teaching someone to hang up a jacket is that they so easily slip off and fall to the ground. I think that this adaptation may  solve that problem.