Paediatric Rehabilitation Therapy

Paediatric Rehabilitation Therapy

St. Joseph’s Paediatric Intermediary care facility provides a range of high-quality, complex paediatric rehabilitation services to children as in-patients and out-patients of St Joseph’s to ensure that they achieve optimal healing and independence. Our rehab services are provided by a multidisciplinary team.

The Paediatric Rehabilitation Team consists of nineteen staff members, namely: The Therapeutic Manager, three Physiotherapists, three Occupational Therapists, three Social Workers, two auxiliary Social Workers, two Speech Therapists, three Rehabilitation Care Workers, a dietician and a pre-school teacher.

OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY

The primary goal of Occupational Therapy is to enable people to participate in the activities of every-day life, promoting health and wellbeing through occupation. In the paediatric rehabilitation service of St Joseph’s, Occupational Therapists work with children and teenagers as their patients and with the children’s families, caregivers and teachers to promote the active participation of the patients in activities or occupations which are meaningful to them.

Services include:

Functional restoration through physical rehabilitation, perceptual training, activities of daily living (ADL) training, scholastic abilities and cognitive rehabilitation (within our scope)
Splinting and assistive devices provided as required
Reintegration of child into school or helping to apply for admission to special needs schools once the child is discharged from St Joseph’s Home.
Facilitation of recreational/therapeutic groups: ADL, craft
Training of parents and care givers

PHYSIOTHERAPY

The Physiotherapy team aims to help their patients to be physically as independent as possible and to improve the quality of their lives within the limits of any impairment, disability or handicap which they live with at any time. The key focus of Physiotherapy is the restoration and acquisition of gross motor functional skills. A variety of treatment strategies is employed to improve a child’s participation in daily life.

Treatments may be geared to improve muscle strength, muscle tone, balance endurance, coordination, speed and agility and other such needs. The Physiotherapy team adopts a patient- and family-centred approach to treatment, working in a multidisciplinary team. All patients are screened and evaluated when they are admitted to St Joseph’s Home to assess the therapeutic input which they require and to form the basis of the individual care and treatment plans drawn up for each child. Children are assessed continually to determine improvement in their condition and the need for further physiotherapy and adapted care plans. Caregiver/ parent training is provided and caregiver/ parent involvement is viewed as an essential part of the rehabilitation process to facilitate the child’s recovery and reintegration of the child back home and into society.

Services include:

Respiratory therapy
Strength training
Neurodevelopmental therapy
Maintenance therapy and prevention of secondary complications
Exercise therapy
Manual therapy
Balance retraining
Gait training/retraining
Maintenance, correction of and application for assistive and mobility devices
Hydrotherapy
Virtual reality
Developmental therapy
Kinesiotaping

SPEECH AND LANGUAGE THERAPY

From the moment they are born, children learn to speak and understand language through regular interaction with and attachment to their mothers or care-givers. Most of the children at St Joseph’s Home have been hospitalised for long periods and require continuing medical care and rehabilitation because of their chronic illness or other condition, which may interrupt or delay their acquisition of speech and language.

The Speech and Language Therapists at St Joseph’s Home assess patients and provide direct and indirect management to medium-term in-patients or patients attending our short-term therapy programme. The patients may present with complex speech, language, communication and/or feeding difficulties relating to their medical condition, tracheotomy or prolonged hospitalisation. We follow a holistic approach to treating each child’s needs assessing their daily environment and routines to ensure that speech and language use is stimulated, that they have social interaction with their peers, that there are opportunities for play and for exploring their environment and that all aspects of child development are fostered.

We emphasise training and collaborating with parents/care-givers, volunteers, nurses and all staff who work with the children to ensure understanding of and promotion of each child’s speech therapy goals in their daily lives and activities.

Services include: