For Occupational Therapists and Physiotherapists

A cane your client will still be using in six months

You already know how to prescribe a single-point stick. The problem is rarely the prescription — it’s what happens after the client leaves.

The aid gets left at home because it’s heavy. It gets left at home because it doesn’t fit in a handbag, so taking it means committing to carrying it all day. It gets left at home because it looks like a hospital item and the client is not ready to be the person with the stick. And a proportion of the time it’s simply never fitted properly in the first place: observational work on how older adults acquire walking aids has found the large majority buy them with no professional guidance at all, and that people will substitute an umbrella or a hiking pole for a prescribed aid when the prescribed one is heavier, less portable or less acceptable to them.

None of that is news to you. It’s the reason this page exists. Clover Canes is a single-point cane built around the failure modes that happen after the appointment: weight, portability, fit and acceptability.

What it is

A carbon-fibre folding single-point cane, made in three lengths, adjustable in five steps, with a shock-absorbing tip of our own design. AUD$159 retail. Australian owned. Registered NDIS Provider.

The clinical case, honestly stated

Mass. Between 260g and 380g depending on the model — the Alpha is the lightest at 260g, the Black Diamond Grande the heaviest at 380g. That is materially lighter than a standard adjustable aluminium cane. The mechanical argument is modest — a cane is not carried for long periods in swing — but the adherence argument is not. Weight is one of the reasons clients give for leaving an aid behind, and a cane left at home provides no support at all. Lightness here is an adherence intervention, not a biomechanical one. Worth noting for prescribing: weight tracks the model rather than the length, so a client who needs the lightest option should be pointed at the Alpha rather than at a shorter size.

Adjustability and fit. Five steps across 740–1040mm means a cane can be fitted to the wrist crease rather than to the nearest available notch. Fixed-length and coarsely-adjustable canes are a common source of a handle set too high, which pushes the shoulder into elevation and the elbow past comfortable flexion, and a handle set too low, which drops the trunk into flexion. The sizing table below is for you to use in clinic.

Portability. It folds. A cane that fits in a handbag, a backpack or a car door pocket is a cane that comes to the shops, to the appointment and to the grandchild’s birthday. In our experience this is the specification that changes behaviour most and gets discussed least.

The tip. The AirTouch tip is an EVA core bonded between rubber layers, and it’s our own design. It compresses on loading, so the impulse transmitted up the shaft to the wrist and elbow on a hard floor is spread over a longer period than with a solid rubber ferrule. Clients with wrist, elbow or shoulder pain — and clients loading a cane heavily on the contralateral side — tend to notice it. We’re not going to tell you it prevents falls; we don’t have the evidence for that claim and neither does anyone else selling a ferrule. What we will say is that it’s a consumable, it wears like any tip, it sits outside the warranty for that reason, and it should be checked at review.

Acceptability. Twenty patterns. This is the specification clinicians tend to skip past and clients tend to lead with. A cane that a client picks out for themselves is a cane that gets a different reception at home, and the research on aid substitution suggests appearance and everyday usability drive real-world choices at least as much as clinical fit does.

Where it isn’t the right aid. A single-point cane is for a client who needs light support, balance assistance or offloading of one side — not for someone who needs weight-bearing support through the upper limb, needs a wide base of support, or has a maximum user weight above 113kg. If your client needs a quad stick or a frame, this isn’t it, and we’d rather say so here than have it returned.

Sizing — a table you can use in clinic

Method. Client standing upright, shoes on, arms relaxed at their sides. The top of the handle should sit level with the distal wrist crease (ulnar styloid). Gripping the handle should then give roughly 15–20° of elbow flexion. As a cross-check, the correct floor-to-handle length is close to half the client’s standing height with shoes on.

Note that the literature is not unanimous — some work has found a height-proportional estimate closer to 0.45 of stature produces elbow angles nearer 20° than the wrist-crease landmark does. Both methods land within a step or two of each other on a five-step cane. Fit to the client, not to the table.

Clients under about 150cm. The shortest setting across the range is 740mm. Below roughly 150cm standing height, check the fit carefully before recommending — the cane may not shorten enough, and a cane that is too long is worse than no cane.

Which hand. Contralateral to the affected side. Cane and affected leg advance together.

Stairs. Up: stronger leg, then cane and weaker leg together. Down: cane first, then weaker leg, then stronger leg.

NDIS

Clover Canes is a Registered NDIS Provider.

A single-point cane at $159 sits within low-cost assistive technology — NDIS supports under $1,500. For a participant with funds in their consumables budget, that generally means no quote and no prior approval from the NDIA is required. Where an item is assessed as higher risk, advice is needed on safe use, which is where you come in.

We invoice plan managers directly and we’re set up for self-managed participants who need a compliant receipt. If you’re writing an AT recommendation and need specifications, a quote on letterhead, or a statement of our registration, email support@clovercanes.com and we’ll send it the same day.

Refer a client, or ask for a trial cane

Send a client to us. Give them your recommendation — length, size and pattern if they’ve chosen one — and they can order at clovercanes.com or ring us. Ask them to include your practice name with the order so we can send the invoice where it needs to go.

Request a free trial cane for your clinic. We’d rather your clients handled one before they bought one, so we’ll send a registered practice a cane at no charge — one per practice, in the size that suits most of your caseload. Email support@clovercanes.com with your practice name and address, your AHPRA registration number, and the size you’d like. We’re doing this for the first 25 practices to ask.

Recommend regularly? Practices that fit clients frequently can open a trade account and hold stock. See the wholesale page: Wholesale.

Contact. support@clovercanes.com, or 02 9538 4633.