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OUR FAMILY STORY

Our personal experience with seeking therapy for our child, lead us to where we are today

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Eastside Therapy Services was started in 2014 after 8 years of working with children showing delays in their development and  providing ABA services within neurodevelopmental centers. While working at these neurodevelopmental centers, I recognized a need for therapy that not effective but fun, natural and personalized to each individual child. We worked to develop a model of therapy that provided high quality and personalized services and kept our caseloads very small while we learned. We committed early on to providing exceptional services and exclusively employing highly skilled therapy staff. We created a mission to provide excellent therapy sessions that children would look forward to.

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Welcoming our second child is what lead us to expand our services past the small caseload we managed. In January 2018 our sweet Sam joined our family.  Within a few weeks Sam was having some challenges that were not typical. We soon found ourselves in the offices of multiple specialists trying to figure out how best to help our baby.  

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Sam ended up being diagnosed with an airway disorder.  Feeding therapy was recommended to begin immediately. I will be the first one to admit that when I was told my child needed therapy even as a passionate believer in therapy for young children, I felt defensive and fearful. I pushed back a bit on the specialist  but I did see the same things he saw.

 

We began the search for a feeding therapist who would come to our home. We knew bringing Sam into a clinic or hospital would expose him to germs and illness that his already compromised airway would not be able to tolerate. We also knew that the therapists seeing him in a clinic would not get to see what Sam was really like; as he absolutely would not act like he does at home. *Every option in front of us involved a clinic or hospital setting or a wait list that we did not have the time for. In addition we wanted some kind of reassurance that the person working with us would be experienced, sensitive and skilled. We did not want someone recommending something that could potentially cause more challenges for Sam due to their lack of experience. 

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We ended up finding a dear friend who is an incredible feeding therapist. She came to our house. She sat in our living room with our whole family and watched Sam eat. She listened to our concerns, gave us thoughtful feedback and suggestions that helped Sam. We saw improvements by following her suggestions and Sam quickly improved. The relief that comes from seeing your child make progress is indescribable.  Sam has grown into a busy and healthy toddler. He still struggles with his airway disorder at times but he no longer needs feeding therapy.

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This experience is what lead us to expand our practice. We realized that by limiting our services to a few families, we were limiting many needed opportunities for children and families. We believe that all families should have access to a high level of care that is personalized to their specific child and family. We applied the model of high quality service we had already developed to more providers and families. We exclusively hire skilled and experienced therapists and keep our pay scale well above other therapy providers with the goal of long term retention and relationship development between therapists and the families they serve. We are a constantly evolving practice aiming to improve. Our mission continues to be an exceptional provider of therapy services and an exceptional place to work.

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Thank you for reading our story and taking a look into the family behind Eastside Therapy Services!

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*Something important to note; Your local Early Intervention program will often provide home visits if your child is under three after a developmental evaluation.  Due to wait lists and clinic only evaluations, this did not work for our family, but it is a fantastic option for many families! 

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