St. Mary’s outpatient pediatric therapy program provides a multidisciplinary team approach. At the core of the team is the child and their family. The physical, occupational and speech therapists provide both skill and play-based therapy, education, and foster partnerships with other community resources, to build each child’s foundation. A foundation that will allow the child and their families to successfully navigate their pathway to attain functional skills for daily living at home, school and in their future communities.
Occupational therapy aims to provide your child with the skills required to complete meaningful daily activities, “occupations,” with the highest level of independence possible. For children these daily activities may include: self care, emotional control, attention, social skills, school readiness and play skills.
Pediatric Speech and Language therapy is designed to help children effectively communicate through either verbal or non-verbal means. Speech therapists focus on three areas of communication: speech, receptive language and expressive language, as well as, feeding and swallowing disorders. Speech includes production of the sounds of the language, stuttering (dysfluency) and voice. Receptive language involves understanding and processing information that is heard, seen, or felt. Expressive language includes saying vocabulary words, combining words into phrases, sentences and conversation so they can share their thoughts, feelings and ideas with others in their world.
Physical therapy works to help infants and children develop strength, balance, movement and gross motor skills to improve their ability to walk, run, jump and other functional activities of daily life.