Professional Therapies
We understand that our residents have special needs and specific conditions which require therapy throughout their lives. Our caretakers arrange transportation to and from their therapy sessions as needed. Our community residents and their families and guardians can count on us to get them to and from their treatments daily.
Care by Licensed or Certified Professionals
All professional therapies are provided by appropriately licensed or certified professionals and are not directly provided by our program. We assist guardians in obtaining these services and can completely arrange appointments for the resident. Therapies may include but are not limited to:
- Physical therapy (includes a pre-enrollment home modifications assessment)
- Occupational therapy (includes pre-enrollment home modifications assessment)
- Speech and language pathology
- Audiology
- Social work
- Behavioral supports (including a variety of related support services designed to shape problem behavior toward more appropriate alternatives…ranging from basic evaluation to in-depth problem behavior management and even Applied Behavior Analysis – ABA – for those who have benefitted from such services in the past)
- Dietary services
- Cognitive rehabilitation therapy
Planning for Next Steps
Typically, our service planning teams meet with you to discuss the specific therapeutic needs of your loved one in any or all of these areas, and then develop a plan, based on the recommendations of the professional, for specific therapeutic services for your loved one for the upcoming year. In general, the process typically involves a formal assessment from the professional, the development of a service plan, and then a lot of training by the professional of our caregiver staff to implement the plan’s procedures.
For example, a Physical Therapist might provide an initial evaluation of your loved one’s PT needs, develop a PT plan to promote range of motion and prevent regression, and then train the staff on how to implement the techniques every day. Of course, our nursing staff will monitor and supervise any therapeutic services delegated to our caregiver staff and provided by them to your loved one to ensure safety, accuracy, and consistency across shifts and in different environments (such as the day program and the group home).
Professional Therapy Focus: Behavioral Support
Problematic or challenging behaviors can interfere with your loved one’s quality of life, hampering the ability to achieve self-control and independence. Our team uses a positive behavioral approach, focusing not only on the challenging behavior, but the individual’s ability to access it, control it, and replace it with a more acceptable and effective alternative behavior in daily routines. Our ultimate goal is to utilize an in-depth assessment of the problem behaviors, drawing on observations and interviews with those who know the individual best, in order to identify the true functions of those behaviors. And then, the behavior support specialist can develop a plan to shape the problems toward more acceptable “replacement behaviors,” followed by rewards for all efforts by the individual in this process.
Our programs only focus on positive reinforcement for replacement behaviors, rather than punishment for problem behaviors. In the final analysis, the key to success then centers on the training of the caregiver staff, who will implement these plans better if their training is thorough and their performance is consistently monitored with ongoing feedback from our service team members and supervisors. In summary, training, monitoring, and consistency are the keys to success in shaping problem behaviors.