Janet Carr

Janet Howard Carr (22 May 1933 – 4 November 2014) was an Australian physiotherapist and academic whose research focused on stroke rehabilitation. She was a professor at the University of Sydney and published numerous textbooks.

Childhood Janet Carr was born in 1933 to Howard and Gladys Carr. Carr is one of three children to Howard and Gladys Carr, and grew up on their sheep-grazing property at Kerr's Creek, 25 kilometres from Orange, New South Wales. She walked across paddocks to attend classes in a one-room one-teacher school, Kinross Wolaroi School, before going to board at PLC (now Kinross Wolaroi), in Orange. Being raised in the bush gave Janet a lifelong love of the Australian landscape and a firm belief in the value of education, especially for girls.

Carr was made a fellow of the Australian College of Physiotherapists in 1983 for her work in neurological physiotherapy. She was awarded a Kellogg Scholarship in 1984 to travel to Columbia University to study biomechanics and motor skill learning; this research earned her a doctorate. Carr and Shepherd's subsequent textbook, Movement Science: Foundations for Physical Therapy Practice in Rehabilitation, was published internationally and was particularly influential in the United States. Their textbook Neurological Rehabilitation: Optimizing Motor Performance, the product of a joint Rockefeller Grant, In one of Carr's many books, she wrote a piece to help assist parents in raising children who are mentally disabled. In one review of this book, a woman named Mary Croxen reviewed her book saying that "They [the family of Down’s syndrome patients] also require assistance with two very fundamental aspects of the child-rearing process, which can indeed be broken down into specifics according to the approach adopted by Janet Carr".

Summary of career By 2010, Carr had written or edited 13 textbooks, most of them with Shepherd. Carr became a member of the Australian College of Physiotherapists in 2013 and was an honorary professor at the University of Sydney until her death in 2014.