Page 16 - Mobility Management, July/August 2022

ATP Series
Kids Being Kids: Rifton’s Classroom Beginning
The origin story for Rifton, now known for its activity chairs and hygiene systems, starts in a classroom.
Rifton’s Elena Noble, PT, said of the company’s beginning, “After the initial IDEA [Individuals with Disabilities Education Act] legislation came out — it was in the 1970s, where kids were being brought out of institutions and into schools — a school reached out to one of our factories, because they knew we made wooden equipment for schools, and said, ‘Could you possibly make a chair for this child with special needs that has now joined our school?’”
That company was Community Playthings, which still manufac- tures classroom furniture, with an emphasis on early childhood education.
“We had a team put something together,” Noble said of that first chair. “It was wooden; that’s what Rifton Equipment was originally, wooden. That was the start of Rifton, and requests started pouring in. And then the Rifton company branched out to a separate business.”
Many Opportunities for Learning
Asked about the importance of carrying optimal positioning
at home over to the classroom, Noble said, “Absolutely, I think there are benefits of having an adaptive seat in the classroom. In
Community Playthings makes wooden furniture (left), but Rifton uses other materials for equipment such as its Activity Chair.
fact, I kind of see it as the other way around: Maybe intervention and skill building actually start in the classroom, where you have qualified professionals there to work with a child and teach them, and then carry that over into the home.
“A child spends most of their day in the school environment. And so this gives us optimal opportunity, lots of time to be teaching the child the skills they really need.”
While school is most fundamentally a place for academics, Noble sees plenty of opportunities to multi-task. She noted that
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