FOR FAMILIES
Clinical Assessment and Therapy Services
We provide assessment, therapy, and other supports to children aged 0-12 who need help with eating, drinking, feeding or swallowing.
We can help if your child is struggling with:
- Eating or drinking skills
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Chewing
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Swallowing
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Managing certain textures, like lumpy foods
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Sucking (e.g. during bottle or breastfeeding)
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- Eating behaviour
- Food refusal
- Limited dietary variety ('picky eating')
- Reluctance to try new foods
- Mealtime battles
- Dependence on tube feeding
What do your clinical services look like?
When you contact us, we will send you some forms to collect some basic information about your child and what support they require. If your child is eligible for services, they will be placed on our waiting list. Once Dr Katherine has space available on her caseload, we will be in touch to schedule an appointment. At this point, we will ask you to complete some more forms about your child's background and feeding.
Collecting this information helps us to provide a more tailored and efficient assessment service.
We always start by assessing your child's eating and drinking over 1-4 sessions. If your child attends therapy for a long time, we will re-assess them regularly to review their progress.
Assessment sessions may include:
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A case history, where we discuss your child's health and development
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An oral motor assessment, where we look at your child's face, and inside their mouth
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A mealtime observation, where we watch your child eat and drink
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Asking you to complete questionnaires about your child
At Protea Therapy, we use a lot of caregiver coaching to help you learn ways to help your child with their eating and drinking. This may mean we sometimes ask you to attend sessions without your child.
Coaching might include:
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Talking about techniques that may help your child
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Demonstrating these techniques
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Asking you to try these techniques, and reflect on how they went
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Recording you trying these techniques so we can view the video together and discuss what works for your child
Depending on the results of your assessment, we may recommend that your child attends therapy.
Therapy is when we work with you and your child on a regular basis to help them learn new skills.
Dr Sanchez is trained in a wide variety of therapy techniques. When choosing a therapy technique, your therapist will always consider whether it is appropriate to your child's needs and interests; and whether it is consistent with the latest scientific evidence.
Sometimes, we may recommend you seek other services in addition to or instead of our services. For example we may recommend:
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That you seek help from other professionals (e.g. a doctor, dietitian, psychologist, or occupational therapist)
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That you see a different speech pathologist, for example someone that speaks your home language, or is located closer to your home.
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That you attend a specialist assessment service, for example a hospital swallowing clinic.
Not sure whether your child needs therapy? Struggling to navigate tricky systems? No time for another regular service, but need someone to chat to?
We offer a Single Session Consultation service, where you can book a single, 30- or 60-minute chat with Dr Katherine Sanchez.
