It’s that time of year again: March marks the return of National Cerebral Palsy Awareness Month, a cause that the team at Thomas Pest Services holds near and dear to us all.

Cerebral Palsy (CP) is a group of permanent neurological disorders most often occurring in early childhood development that has a severe impact on body movement and muscle coordination. Children that develop cerebral palsy often suffer impaired fine motor skills and oral functioning as well as negative effects on oral motor functioning, coordination, muscle tone, reflexes, posture, and balance.

At Thomas Pest Services, we have a special connection to Cerebral Palsy - Riley, daughter of owners Bill Clark and Sarah Thomas-Clark, was diagnosed with the disorder (specifically right side spastic hemiplegia) at only one-and-a-half years old. However, while Riley has suffered impairment to her coordination and fine motor skills, she has never let her disability bring her down. Riley is a fighter and attends weekly occupational and physical therapy to help with her condition, and her determination to overcome her impairment serves as an inspiration to everyone working at Thomas Pest.

Riley has never given up, and we won’t either. In honor of Riley, in addition to decking out our office in all-green (associated with Cerebral Palsy awareness), we’ve also re-branded to further show our support for research into finding a cure for Cerebral Palsy, and our new logo will appear on all of our service vehicles starting this month. We even had Riley come in for our meeting at the end of February to kick off Cerebral Palsy Awareness Month to remind us all of the very real people that CP affects and what we’re working toward. The team at Thomas Pest Services will also be wearing our green shirts every Friday as part of our awareness-raising efforts for the disorder and the over 500,000 children in America affected by it.

For more information about how Thomas Pest Services is participating in Cerebral Palsy Awareness month as well as fun stories from the Thomas Pest team, follow our Instagram account, @thomaspestservices, and the hashtag #tpsgoesgreen. With support from readers like you, we know that we can raise awareness about Cerebral Palsy.