Our Services
Occupational Therapy
If simply defined occupational therapy helps people with health challenges and bring them back to perform daily activities. For a child, this might mean playing with friends, attending school or perform tasks needed for school and learning new things to be a happy independent teenager to an adult.
Performing a daily routine task can become difficult after injury, illness or disability and occupational therapy helps you to develop/regain these skills to participate in such activities.
Who is qualified occupational therapist?
An occupational therapist is a professional who has studied bachelors in occupational therapy or bachelors in science for 5 years including training in different settings and licensed by authorities in working state and have experience working with kids and child’s specific disorder.
An occupational therapist studies various interesting subjects during academic years like anatomy, physiology, pharmacy, bio-stats, ergonomics, orthopedics, psychology, pediatrics and many more related subjects.
This blend of subjects make them all-rounder in every field to make their client independent in daily routine.
As learning is a never ending process, our therapists keep progressing in their career by increasing their expertise with further education and certifications.
Who would need occupational therapy?
- Birth injuries or birth defects
- Sensory processing disorder
- Learning problems
- Autism spectrum disorder
- Developmental delays (not able to roll, crawl or walk)
- Hand injuries
- Handwriting issues
- Reading problems
- ADHD/ADD
- Hand injuries
- Spina bifida
- Mental health or behavioral problems
- Multiple sclerosis
- Cerebral palsy
- Traumatic injuries (brain or spinal cord)
- Poor play skills
- Coordination disorders
- Apraxia or dyspraxia
- Activities of daily living/self care skills like eating, dressing etc.
Speech Therapy
Speech therapy is the profession that focuses on improving a child’s speech and abilities to understand and express language (verbal or non-verbal).
Speech therapy works in the area of:
Speech
· Articulation disorder: difficulty in saying words or saying them incorrectly to the point where listener cannot understand.
· Fluency disorder: like stuttering, partial word repetition (“g-g-girl)
· Resonance: problem with pitch, volume or quality of the voice.
Language
· Receptive: difficulty in understanding or processing language
· Expressive: difficulty in putting words together, unable/difficulty to use language socially in appropriate way
· Cognitive-communication disorder: difficulty in communication skills that are cause of memory, attention, perception, organisation, regulation and problem solving skills.
Dysphagia/feeding problems
· Difficulty in the way someone eats or drinks, including problem chewing, swallowing, coughing, gagging or refusing foods.
Who is qualified speech therapist?
A speech-language therapist has at least bachelor’s degree and licensed by authorities in working state and have experience working with kids and your child’s specific disorder.
Who would need speech therapy?
- Hearing impairments
- Cognitive (intellectual, thinking) or other developmental delays
- Weak oral muscles
- Birth defects such as cleft lip or cleft palate
- Autism spectrum disorder
- Oral apraxia/ difficulty planning movements
- Articulation problems
- Fluency disorders
- Respiratory problems (breathing disorders)
- Feeding and swallowing disorders
- Traumatic brain injury
Sensory integration
What is it?
Sensory integration is the process by which we receive the information from environment through our senses and organize the information and then use it to participate in daily activities like eating, walking dressing, playing etc.
To process the information, we use our below senses:
· Smell
· Taste
· Touch
· Vision
· Hearing
· Vestibular (balance)
· Proprioception (position and movement of body)
· Interoception (sense from inside body like hunger, hot, cold)
Who can benefit?
Birth to all ages.
Sensory integration is an extremely important part, it plays a major role in child’s development, behavior and many other aspects of life affecting daily age appropriate activities.
Aspects of life that can be improved with Sensory integration(SI):
· Infants and toddlers at risk for developmental problems
· Premature infants
· School aged children with sensory integration problems. A variety of sensory-based approaches can address life skills, participation, and behaviors needed at home, in the community, and in the classroom
· Children with fear of movement, sensitivity to touch, poor motor planning, or decreased awareness of body position in space.
· Autism and ADHD
· Cerebral palsy
· Handwriting
· Clumsy child
· Picky eater
· Fine motor and gross motor skills
How is it done?
A thorough evaluation is done by filling up standardized assessments for specific age range group, information is collected from parents and school if needed.
After the assessment a child specific sensory diet is planned. It includes not only things like balance treatments, movement therapy and structured exposure to sensory input, but also carefully designed and planned activities including physical, visual and tactile and also other accommodation needed at home and school.
Handwriting program
What is it?
Our handwriting programs are individually designed by an occupational therapist to meet the needs of each child. We focus on the basic skills, each child needs in order to able to write letters, words, and sentences without frustration or stress.
We use concepts and tools from the evidence based researches which includes multi-sensory approaches to teach children how to hold their pencil and form letters with ease and confidence.
We at Evolve Early Intervention combine various techniques to bring out best and quick result in playful way.
Who can benefit?
Children ages 2 to 8 years.
A thorough screening and assessment is done to identify underlying ineligible handwriting and other issues affecting writing.
Aspects of handwriting which can improve through participation in this program include:
- Forming letters
- Writing with enough pressure
- Pre-writing skills (the lines and shapes one needs to learn in order to be able to write letters)
- Keeping letters on the line
- Spacing between letters and words
- Making letters the correct size and shape
- Letter reversals
- Enjoyment of handwriting
- visual attention improvement
Oral Placement Therapy
What is it?
Oral Placement Therapy (OPT) is a speech therapy which utilizes a combination of:
- auditory stimulation,
- visual stimulation and
- tactile stimulation to the mouth to improve speech clarity.
OPT is an important addition to traditional speech treatment methods for clients with placement and movement deficits.
It is a tactile-proprioceptive teaching technique which accompanies traditional therapy. Traditional therapy is primarily auditory and visual.
Clients with motor and/or sensory impairments benefit from tactile and proprioceptive components because speech is a tactile-proprioceptive act.
OPT is used to improve articulation awareness, placement (dissociation, grading, and direction of movement), stability, and muscle memory; all of these are necessary for the development of speech clarity.
Who can benefit?
OPT can be used with clients of different age group and ability levels. It assists children who have issues with feeding, drooling and pronunciation. It can also be incorporated into program plans for many types of speech disorders (e.g., dysarthria, apraxia of speech voice disorders, fluency disorders and post CVA clients, as well as clients with mild-to-profound levels of hearing loss).
Traditional auditory and visually based speech facilitation has not been effective with these clients because there may be a movement or placement disorder. So, before introducing any of the OPT techniques, the client’s motor functioning for speech and feeding should be thoroughly assessed.
How does it work?
OPT teaches oral structural placement to clients who cannot produce or imitate speech sounds using traditional auditory or visual input. It is a small part of a comprehensive speech and language program and should not be done in isolation. The activities are carefully selected to stimulate the same movements used in the targeted speech production. They can be completed in under 15 minutes and can be used to refocus attention and concentration from a sensory processing perspective.