Pediatric Rehabilitation Services is part of the Olson Huff Center for Child Development. We provide inpatient and outpatient care for children, ages birth to 18 years, who have physical, learning, and/or developmental needs. We offer specialized services in pediatric physical, occupational, and speech therapy.
Our ultimate treatment goal is that your child meets his or her full potential through hands on treatment, education, and home/community practice. We emphasize the importance of family/caregiver involvement in therapy sessions, both at the center and working with your child at home. A few of the specialty services we offer include:
For more information about pediatric rehabilitation services at Mission Children's Hospital, call 828-213-1725 or e-mail us at helene.cohen@msj.org. Outpatient pediatric rehabilitation is provided Monday - Friday, 8:00 a.m. until 6:00 p.m. at Huff Center Therapies located at the Reuter Outpatient Center:
Reuter Outpatient Center
11 Vanderbilt Park Drive
Asheville, NC 28803
Pediatric Occupational Therapy
Therapy facilitates development of sensory and motor functions, which enables children to interact with their environment and participate in daily activities (learning, play, self care) as independently as possible.
Children have multiple occupations or "jobs" throughout their development. An infant's "job" is to learn more about themselves and their environment through play and sensory exploration. Toddlers "work" as both players and preschool students: practicing drawing, cutting, meal time participation, dressing and other self care tasks. Later, children are expected to become more independent in self care routines and mastery of writing, drawing, cutting and paying attention.
Occupation Therapy can help improve functioning in children who have difficulty with the following:
- Processing touch, sound, movement and other sensations
- Attending to tasks
- Organizational Skills
- Fine motor skills, especially in handwriting, coloring, drawing or cutting
- Eye hand coordination and whole body coordination
- Feeding skills, including sensory and oral motor development
- Independence in self care skills, including dressing and feeding
Pediatric Physical Therapy
The pediatric physical therapist evaluates, treats & educates patients and families regarding impairments, functional limitations and disabilities that may result from diseases, disorders, conditions or injuries.
Pediatric Physical Therapists Can Help:
- Evaluate and treat a child's developmental skills, strength, joint mobility, balance, coordination and functional movement
- Gait training/fit & train for crutches and/or walkers
- Functional training for transition to home or rehabilitation setting
Pediatric Speech-language Therapy
Speech and language therapy can help children develop effective communication skills, and/or feeding and swallowing skills.
Services include prevention, identification, evaluation, treatment and rehabilitation of communication and/or feeding disorders.
Speech-language pathologists are certified by the American Speech-Language Hearing Association and licensed by the state of North Carolina.
Speech-language pathologists can help evaluate and treat children with the following difficulties:
- Speech-language delay (including impairments in receptive and expressive language, prelinguistic communication, pragmatic language and articulation/phonology)
- Severe speech-language impairment requiring augmentative and alternative communication
- Feeding Disorders
- Oral motor dysfunction and swallowing problems
- Cognitive/communicative deficits following brain injury
- Auditory processing deficits
- Dysfluency
- Voice Disorders
- Childhood apraxia of speech
Huff Center Therapies Specialized Programs
In addition to individual physical, occupational and speech therapy sessions, we offer the following specialty programs:
Feeding & Swallowing Program
Many children have difficulty with feeding and swallowing.
Some warning signs include:
- Coughing
- Gagging or choking during or after meals
- Difficulty managing food textures
- Difficulty sucking from a bottle
- Unusually slow eating
- Tiring out before feeding is finished
- Increased congestion during or after meals
- Behavioral problems during meals
- Frequent pneumonia or wheezing
- Frequent spiting up or vomiting
- Poor weight gain or other concerns
Our program helps children with feeding and swallowing problems by bringing together a team of medically based, child focused and family centered experts from many specialties to provide a comprehensive team evaluation and plan an individualized treatment program based on their needs.
Developmental Follow Up Program
This program is a specialized interdisciplinary program that provides continued periodic developmental assessment during a premature or high risk infant's first two years of life. Our goals are:
- To provide family centered care
- Answer questions about growth and progress
- Examine development
- Talk about what is typical for premature and high risk babies
- Teach ways to interact with the baby to help him/her reach his/her developmental potential
- Refer to community resources if needed.
- Videofluorosopy (Modified Barium Swallow Study) Videofluroscopy is a test to assess risk of aspiration for children who exhibit coughing, choking, strangling, fever with feeds, history of pneumonia and/or bronchitis. This test is performed by a speech pathologist and radiologist.
Pediatric Aquatic Therapy
Aquatic therapy combines the principles of a typical physical or occupational therapy session with the benefits of a warm water environment. The properties of water can help facilitate range of motion, provide resistance against movement, relax and stretch muscles or provide weight bearing in a reduced gravity environment. Some of the patients who can be helped through aquatic therapy include:
- Children with hypertonicity or increased stiffness
- Orthopedic rehabilitation patients
- Children with sensory integration disorders
- Children with hypotonicity or weakness
- Children who need a new and exciting therapeutic environment to enhance motivation
Serial Casting
Serial casting is a process which casts are applied and removed in succession. The purpose of this process is to regain extensibility in the soft tissues surrounding the casted joint. The typical treatment involves four to eight cast changes followed by use of AFOs to maintain increased range. Serial casting is often done at the ankles to decrease toe walking and improve gait patterns.
Constraint Therapy
Constraint therapy is an evidence based, short term, intensive treatment approach for children with hemiparesis (one sided weakness). In order to encourage functional use of the affected arm, the child's stronger arm is restrained, typically using a cast. Therapy is provided for three sessions per week for three weeks to promote function of the affected arm. A customized home program is developed for families to promote self care activities in the home environment.
PROMPT (Prompts for Restructuring Oral Muscular Phonetic Targets)
PROMPT is an approach for working with children who have speech motor challenges that uses neuromotor, kinesthetic and proprioceptive principles. Auditory, visual and tactile cues are provided to promote optimal patterns of orofacial movement to improve speech production.
VitalStim
VitalStim is an intensive electrical stimulation swallowing treatment program using electrical stimulation to strengthen swallowing muscles in order to improve oral feeding skills.
Additional Information & Location
For more information about pediatric rehabilitation services at Mission Children's Hospital, call 828-213-1725 or e-mail us at helene.cohen@msj.org. Outpatient pediatric rehabilitation is provided Monday - Friday, 8:00 a.m. until 6:00 p.m. at Huff Center Therapies located at the Reuter Outpatient Center:
Reuter Outpatient Center
11 Vanderbilt Park Drive
Asheville, NC 28803
