Every child deserves the opportunity to reach his or her full potential. That potential is unlocked when a child’s efforts are guided by therapists with the right skills. While children achieve meaningful gains at all ages, early identification and therapeutic intervention are critical for providing your child with the best opportunity for optimal success.
In collaboration with you and the members of your child’s team, we design an individualized plan of care and develop functional goals to address the specific needs of your child. During this process, we encourage you to share your insights, your goals, and information about your child’s performance in other settings. Our therapists will work closely with you to provide education, involve you during therapy visits, and support carry-over of therapeutic activities at home, school, and in the community.
The quality of our service is our highest priority. All therapy is provided one-on-one by licensed therapists (not therapy assistants) to optimize ongoing assessment and continuity of care. Treatment caseloads are carefully managed to ensure that our therapists are available to dedicate time and attention to the unique needs of your child. Close consultation among our therapists results in earlier detection of delayed skills, a comprehensive approach to treatment planning, and stronger cross-training to support targeted goals across therapy disciplines.
With advanced training in topics and techniques specific to the pediatric population, our therapists blend progressive, evidence-based practice with family-centered, compassionate care. We know continued professional development is essential to providing your child the most effective treatment in the most efficient manner.
NDT is a holistic and interdisciplinary clinical practice model informed by current and evolving research that emphasizes individualized therapeutic handling based on movement analysis for habilitation and rehabilitation of individuals with neurological pathophysiology. The therapist uses the International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health (ICF) model in a problem solving approach to assess activity and participation, thereby to identify and prioritize relevant integrities and impairments as a basis for establishing achievable outcomes with clients and caregivers. An in-depth knowledge of the human movement system, including the understanding of typical and atypical development, and expertise in analyzing postural control, movement, activity, and participation throughout the lifespan, form the basis for examination, evaluation, and intervention. Therapeutic handling, used during evaluation and intervention, consists of a dynamic reciprocal interaction between the client and therapist for activating optimal sensorimotor processing, task performance, and skill acquisition to enable participation in meaningful activities.
Pediatric pelvic floor therapy is much different than treatment geared towards adults. Incontinence is a symptom of many conditions children experience involving their digestive and urinary tracts. Pelvic floor therapy utilizes behavioral modifications, dietary changes, strengthening and muscle re-education to assist in a variety of symptoms. These include bowel or bladder incontinence, pelvic pain, abdominal pain, constipation, chronic UTIs, bedwetting, and dysfunctional voiding patterns. This therapy involves family and caregivers, as well as the child, to provide the skills and tools necessary for resolution of symptoms.
Source: International Children’s Continence Society
Orofacial Myofunctional Disorders are atypical, adaptive patterns that emerge in the absence of normalized patterns within the orofacial complex. The regular presence of these adaptive movements can often result in a variety of disturbances. Examples of Orofacial Myofunctional Disorders include one or a combination of the following: thumb and finger sucking habits, a routine habit of resting with the lips apart, a forward resting posture of the tongue between or against the teeth, tongue thrust, and other harmful oral habits. Orofacial Myofunctional Therapy involves an individualized program to help the patient retrain these adaptive patterns of muscle function, and to create and maintain a healthy orofacial environment. Treatment goals may include the following:
DIRFloortime is an intervention that is used to promote an individual’s development through a respectful, playful, joyful, and engaging process. It uses the power of relationships and human connections to promote engagement, communication, positive behaviors, and thinking. It is based on the DIR® model that was developed by Dr. Stanley Greenspan and his colleagues. It is used around the world by teachers, occupational therapists, speech therapists, mental health professionals, parents, and many others that care for individuals with developmental challenges or other related needs. It is an evidence-based approach to promoting human development that is used with children, young adults, and even adults…especially those on the autism spectrum.
Source: Interdisciplinary Council on Development and Learning
PROMPT is an acronym for Prompts for Restructuring Oral Muscular Phonetic Targets. The technique is a tactile-kinesthetic approach that uses touch cues to a patient’s articulators (jaw, tongue, lips) to manually guide them through a targeted word, phrase or sentence. The technique develops motor control and the development of proper oral muscular movements, while eliminating unnecessary muscle movements, such as jaw sliding and inadequate lip rounding. Therapists begin by helping patients produce certain phonemes. A phoneme is the smallest increment of sound in speech. For example, the “d” sound in the word dog is one phoneme, the “o” is another and the “g” is yet another. Each phoneme requires different muscle contractions/retractions and placement/movement of the jaw, lips, tongue, neck and chest to produce. All of these things have to happen with the proper timing and sequence to produce one phoneme correctly. The therapist attempts to “teach” the patient’s muscles to produce a phoneme correctly by stimulating all of these through touch. With the timing and movement of more than 100 muscles involved, you can see why the training is so intense. PROMPT therapy is appropriate for a wide range of patients with communication disorders. The most common patients have motor speech disorders, articulation problems or are non-verbal children. Many patients with aphasia, apraxia/dyspraxia, dysarthria, pervasive development disorders, cerebral palsy, acquired brain injuries and autism spectrum disorders have benefitted from PROMPT therapy. An evaluation by a PROMPT-trained speech therapist is the only way to find out if a patient is appropriate for the therapy.
Source: The PROMPT Institute
Myofascial Release is a safe and very effective hands-on technique that involves applying gentle sustained pressure into the Myofascial connective tissue restrictions to eliminate pain and restore motion. This essential “time element” has to do with the viscous flow and the piezoelectric phenomenon: a low load (gentle pressure) applied slowly will allow a viscoelastic medium (fascia) to elongate. Trauma, inflammatory responses, and/or surgical procedures create Myofascial restrictions that can produce tensile pressures of approximately 2,000 pounds per square inch on pain sensitive structures that do not show up in many of the standard tests (x-rays, myelograms, CAT scans, electromyography, etc.). The use of Myofascial Release allows us to look at each patient as a unique individual. Our one-on-one therapy sessions are hands-on treatments during which our therapists use a multitude of Myofascial Release techniques and movement therapy. We promote independence through education in proper body mechanics and movement, self-treatment instruction, enhancement of strength, improved flexibility, and postural and movement awareness.
Jump Start Pediatric Therapy is committed to building an exceptional team! We are always interested in hearing from qualified pediatric PTs, OTs, and SLPs who share our philosophy and passion for working with kids and their families.
Ideal candidates have strong outpatient pediatric clinical experience plus the ambition and leadership skills to enhance our team and enrich our therapy programs. A career at Jump Start Pediatric Therapy includes: