Outpatient Rehabilitation Therapies
The right therapy can improve any condition that limits a child’s abilities. While the therapies we offer at Phoenix Children’s can sometimes look like play, every therapy is carefully planned and highly structured to help kids achieve specific functional goals.
Phoenix Children’s offers the latest advances in pediatric rehabilitation, equipped with the latest technology, equipment, and facilities, to meet the unique needs of each child.
Physical Therapy (PT)
Physical therapy helps children improve movement, strength, skills and functions for increased independence and a better quality of life. Our pediatric-trained physical therapists evaluate your child to determine what is limiting their ability to access their environment or participate in desired activities. They then work with your child to optimize movement through strength, flexibility, balance and coordination training for increased independence in mobility and meaningful participation in play and leisure. Physical therapy may include:
Building muscles, toning the body, and enhancing body awareness and efficiency of movement
Strength, endurance, range of motion and posture, including age-appropriate developmental mobility
Enhances strength and movement, such walking
Use of large muscles involved in walking, running, throwing and other functions
Applying a cast to a tight joint, such as the ankle, and then recasting it periodically as healing progresses to improve flexibility and movement
Occupational Therapy (OT)
Occupations are the activities you do that are important to you. This includes activities of daily living such as getting dressed, moving around, going to the bathroom, or eating. They can also include participation in arts, sports, school, work, relationships, or something else.
Occupational therapists help you figure out which occupations matter the most to you. They help you build the physical, social, emotional, cognitive, or other personal skills and strategies that you need in order to participate in those valued occupations.
Therapists focus on a variety of targeted skills, which include:
Skills for activities of daily living at home, school, work and play, including self-care, such as feeding, dressing, bathing and grooming
Helping patients and families learn how to use a wide range of adaptive or assistive tools and technologies, such as adaptive utensils for eating, wheelchairs, and bathing and toileting devices
Including grasping skills, object manipulation, writing, using scissors and tying shoestrings
Therapies to improve hand and wrist strength and function
Creating and maintaining healthy lifestyles as kids transition from childhood into adolescence and adulthood
Improving the ability to process, integrate and manage information received by the brain through touch, taste, vision and sound, and involving motor skills, feeding and other functions
To protect, support and promote healing and function of the hand, arm or other parts of the body affected by burns, injuries or other conditions
Coordination of eyes and hands for activities of daily living
Speech-Language Therapy
Speech therapy focuses on a child’s speech, language and communication skills. It also includes help with feeding problems, swallowing disorders, cognition and other conditions. Types of speech-language therapy include:
All forms of communication other than talking, such as writing, use of communication boards and electronic devices, and sign language
Pronouncing words correctly and clearly, and speaking in a smooth and natural way, including addressing stuttering
Including use of hearing aids and post-surgical therapies for cochlear implants
Includes help with functions such as problem-solving, reasoning and memory
Includes systemic weaning process (SWP) therapy and therapies for a range of feeding and swallowing disorders
Works on conditions such as abnormal tongue thrust, tongue protrusion and other disorders affecting speech, communications, feeding and other functions
Includes improvement of a child’s expressive communication and comprehension abilities and functions
Listening and talking, including understanding and using words effectively
Including resonance voice therapy and transgender voice therapy
Feeding Therapy
A speech-language pathologist provides feeding therapy. It can range from infant bottle- or breastfeeding therapy to complex swallowing disorders that can lead to nutritional imbalances. Our specialists evaluate the source and nature of related challenges and recommend appropriate therapies. Related tests and treatments include:
Helps kids who have trouble swallowing food and liquids by improving related skills
Use of a flexible scope to examine parts of the mouth and throat involved in swallowing
Different names for a test that shows moving, real-time images of what happens in your mouth when you swallow different foods or liquids
A device that helps to improve swallowing and related muscle functions
Improves skills needed to coordinate use of the lips, tongue, palate, jaw, teeth and other parts of the mouth involved in speaking, eating and swallowing
A step-by-step process to wean children from thickened fluids, which are sometimes used to treat feeding disorders
Features and Equipment
Phoenix Children’s uses cutting-edge technology for comprehensive and innovative therapy. Our outpatient services, equipment and resources include:
We pioneered the pediatric use of this sophisticated suspension system for overground gait training. It enables a child or adolescent to practice gait training and other exercises independently, bridging the gap between treadmill-based and free walking.
Our therapists use this sophisticated training device to rehabilitate arm and hand function.
We use this equipment as part of testing and treatment of balance disorders.
BITS is an innovative, all-in-one therapy tool we use for visual motor training.
We use smart systems such as RT 300, which uses electrical stimulation for strengthening after a neurologic injury.
Our therapy areas include a large open gym and other gym spaces, plus private treatment rooms.
Specialty Programs
Phoenix Children’s specialty programs offer advanced, specialized and customized care for many unique or complex conditions. Therapists are specialty trained to treat these conditions using effective, research-supported approaches. We collaborate as needed to plan specialized therapies to improve function for conditions and treatments such as:
- Aural Habilitation – Auditory perception training for hearing disorders
- Chronic Pain Program
- Comprehensive Behavior Intervention For Tics (CBIT)
- Concussion/Vestibular Program – Therapies for certain types of vision, coordination, headache and balance disorders
- Constraint-induced Movement Therapy – Therapy to improve the strength and use of a neurologically impaired arm and hand
- Feeding Group – Provides peer interactions in a kid-friendly environment with the goal to promote balanced eating and increased food variety
- Intensive Feeding – A six-week, structured program with Occupational and Speech therapy sessions targeting specific feeding problems, including decreasing G-tube dependence
- Outpatient Neurological Program – Outpatient care for a variety of neurological conditions that require specialized rehabilitative therapies
- Pelvic Floor Program – Improves urinary and bowel muscle function
- Serial Casting – Casting and recasting a tight joint, such as the ankle, in stages to improve flexibility and movement as healing progresses
Multidisciplinary Clinics
Phoenix Children’s hosts several multidisciplinary clinics, led by physicians in partnership with the rehabilitation team and other clinicians, enabling us to develop comprehensive care plans tailored to specific conditions.
Our teams work together to evaluate current needs and determine any additional support your child or adolescent might need, including further referrals, equipment, or adjustments to the treatment plan. Depending on the condition or diagnosis, various providers may be involved in your child's care.
Below are a few of our multidisciplinary clinics. To learn more about these and other clinics at Phoenix Children’s, please contact your physician.
- Cardiac Neurodevelopmental Program
- Cerebral Palsy Clinic
- Down Syndrome Clinic
- Newborn Early Screening Team (NEST) Clinic – Developmental support for babies after neonatal intensive care
- Pediatric Feeding Disorders Clinic – Multispecialty gastroenterology and rehabilitative care for children with severe feeding disturbances who may depend on enteral feedings (through a tube that goes into the gastrointestinal tract), including our intensive feeding program to improve related skills
- Seating and Mobility Clinic
- Spina Bifida Clinic
See Why It Matters
Meet our motivated kids, smart equipment and the leadership that makes it possible: