Pediatric Services

PEDIATRIC THERAPY SERVICES -

The Care Group provides Occupational, Physical, and Speech Therapy for children ages 0-18 years. We have provided these services both in a home health setting since 1992 and a clinic setting since 1995. Our pediatric therapy staff is highly skilled and specializes in areas such as Neuro-Developmental Treatment™ (NDT), Sensory Integration, SAMONAS Listening Program, as well as other services below. Our goal is to provide our clients with the best opportunity to develop skills essential for function.

Neuro-Developmental Treatment™ (NDT): NDT is the primary treatment technique for individuals with central nervous system impairment such as children with cerebral palsy or traumatic brain injury. NDT evaluates a person’s movement to determine the focus of therapy. Therapeutic handling is used to assist in the facilitation of typical movement to gain function.

Sensory Integration: Our senses include touch, hearing, sight, taste, smell, gravity, joint and muscle movement. SI is a neurological process that provides us with the ability to combine all of these senses and enables a child to appropriately interact with people and their environment. Sensory integration is a part of normal development for most children through play and everyday activities. In children who lack the integration we see development delays, learning deficits, feeding difficulties, and behavior problems. These deficits may occur due to their inability to process sensory information appropriately.

SAMONAS Auditory Intervention: SAMONAS is an auditory stimulation program using scientifically and artistically structured music and sound. This individualized program uses the auditory system to stimulate and organize all other senses and the brain’s response. The results are improvement in auditory processing, communication, social skills, sensory integration, self-regulation, motor planning, attention, memory and writing skills.

Handwriting Without Tears®: Handwriting Without Tears® is a program that evaluates and treats the child as a whole when looking at handwriting. Handwriting problems may include difficulty with letter formation, letter spacing and sizing. These problems are commonly addressed by determining the underlying causes of poor handwriting or frustration with handwriting. During a handwriting evaluation, it is important to consider a child’s visual-perceptual and visual-motor skills as well as ensure that the child has all of the prewriting skills necessary to be successful with handwriting.

Cognitive Therapy: Children with speech/language impairments may also have cognitive deficits. Cognitive impairments may present areas of weakness in memory, perception, reasoning/judgment, attention, and problem solving. Speech-language pathologists work with children to improve their overall “thinking” skills.

Oral Motor/Intensive Feeding Therapy: Due to medical complications, many children do not develop oral skills required to coordinate sucking and oral exploration during early development. A lack of oral skill development often leads to difficulties in oral feeding. We work with feeding on all levels from enteral to oral feeds. Some children are not born with feeding issues but develop feeding problems due to sensory impairments, sensory-motor impairments, or failure to thrive. These children may have oral aversion, limited food choices, poor appetite, poor intake or weight gain. After an extensive evaluation, the best individualized treatment approach is chosen and implemented.

Developmental Play Therapy: Children learn by playing. Therapists play with children during therapy to create an atmosphere for learning, to help children use their senses to explore objects, and to improve the child’s overall thinking skills.

Fluency/Stuttering Therapy: Persons who stutter would be taught to use fluency enhancing techniques to reduce or eliminate the occurrences of stuttering during spontaneous speech.

Voice Therapy: May involve correcting abnormal pitch, loudness, resonance, and/or quality of voice that interferes with communication.

Language Therapy: Children may have difficulties comprehending and/or using spoken and written communication. Deficits may be identified in the form, content, and function of the language system. Functional language approaches focus to improve the child’s ability to communicate basic wants and needs. Improving the overall use of spontaneous communication, social skills, vocabulary improvement, syntax, and grammatical understanding and use are also commonly treated.

Kinesio Taping®: Kinesio Taping® involves the use of a special type of tape that is applied to the skin over a specific muscle or joint. This tape can be used for several purposes, but its most common use is to facilitate an increased use of the proper muscles to perform specific movements for an extended period of time. Due to increased use of the muscle, strength increases and the quality of movement improves.

Articulation/Phonological Processing Therapy: Treatment involves correcting inappropriate productions of standard speech sounds due to incorrect placement of the lips, tongue, teeth, velum, and pharynx during speech.

Behavior Modification: A variety of techniques may be used to help remove or reduce undesirable behaviors and replace them with appropriate ones.

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For Referrals, please call us at:

713-383-2100

Fax: 713-383-2114