SYLACAUGA — A long awaited rehabilitation program, aimed at improving care of children with developmental delays and communications disorders, is now up and running at Coosa Valley Medical Center.Pediatric Place opened its doors in a newly renovated area at the hospital this month, as the county’s first pediatric facility offering specialized pediatric rehabilitation services, not only to the local community, but surrounding counties as well.
The program marks a major milestone in the growth of the city and in the hospital’s capabilities, said Lisa Geyer, CVMC director of rehabilitation services.
"It’s a long-needed and deserved program," she said. "We’ve never had anything like this around here. It’s something we’ve been working toward doing here for a long while."
The program will fill a void in accessibility to families who can now stay in the area to meet the needs of children with occupational and speech development problems.
"Before you had to go to Birmingham. So, this is a big, huge step for the community to be able to receive care at home," Geyer said.
The pediatric services provide outpatient rehabilitation for newborn babies to patients 18 years old with a variety of diagnoses, such as cerebral palsy, Down’s syndrome, pervasive developmental delays, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, sensory processing disorders and dystocia, with symptoms of some conditions going undetected for too long.
"There are a lot of children who slip through the cracks," Geyer said. "You wouldn’t believe how often it happens, but people aren’t always aware of what to look for.
An example, she said, are children with ADHD, which causes their systems to be over stimulated by their environment. With sensory integration therapy to help disseminate the senses, which can also overlap with motor skills, children become calmer, better listeners and have better penmanship and improved grades. Therapy exposes children to playful interaction at the facility, which also helps to promote the cognitive, speech, motor, social and self-help skills. Along with treatment, the program offers education, training and support to families depending on an individual child’s needs, Geyer said.
"We provide different sense experiences in the clinic in an adaptive way," occupational therapist Carlee Blanchard said, that can oftentimes be used in conjunction with medication or to help wean a child off medication.
Currently Pediatric Place’s largest caseload is children needing speech therapy for difficulties such as stuttering, feeding deficits, communicative disorders and speech or language delays, Geyer said.
Before evaluating a child at the facility, a referral to the appropriate service is needed by a primary care physician, she said, but parents or caregivers who may want to consider having their child evaluated by a therapist should look for signs of seeing or hearing problems, if their child moves, walks or talks differently than other children of the same age, and has health problems.
