PEDS School Age Services Handbook

Easter Seals Superior California’s School Age Services program, also known as Nonpublic Agency Services (NPA), provides physical, occupational and speech therapy as Designated Instruction and Services (DIS) to many local school districts as prescribed in a child’s Individualized Education Program (IEP) and per the recommendation of a child’s IEP team. Physical, occupational and speech therapists use their training and expertise to offer a variety of services and interventions appropriate to the curriculum and environment of young children, adolescents and teens in order to encourage and/or enhance educational success.

Mission

The mission of the School Age Services Program is to offer an efficient, reliable service which enables schools to meet obligations and responsibilities under the Education Code. We do whatever it takes, utilizing all available resources to assure the child’s success in the classroom.

As required by Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and 1992, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), children three through twenty-one are eligible to receive additional developmental, corrective or supportive services in order to benefit from special education programs. The School Age Services Program offers these special services so that these children can be successful in the classroom and in their lives.

Physical, occupational and speech therapists are committed health professionals who have specific training in human growth and development and remediation of dysfunction. Included in the therapist’s education are courses in human anatomy and physiology; human development, especially the motor and psychological domains; sensorimotor processing as related to functional activities; kinesiology; analysis of activities of daily living; the study of occupational roles; communication and swallowing disorders; and oral-peripheral functions .

Easter Seals assumes liability, training and supervision of all staff. All staff are cleared by the F.B.I. and the Department of Justice, and have current CPR and First Aid Training.

Therapies Available

Physical Therapy: Physical therapy is therapeutic service designed to address gross motor delays in children due to decreased range of motion, abnormal muscle tone, abnormal movement patterns, and orthopedic abnormalities. The main focus of physical therapy is to increase stability and mobility in large muscle groups. Physical therapy initially focuses on building postural stability, then on building mobility. Physical therapists make sure the building blocks of strength, joint range, muscle firing sequences, and motor planning are present so that a child can build upon those skills to promote more normalized patterns of physical development. Therapeutic sessions focus on balance exercises, range of motion, positioning, mobility skills, family training, adaptive equipment, and/or orthotic monitoring (if applicable). Physical therapy cannot make a child master a skill sooner than he/she is able to, but it can help provide opportunities for children to develop and practice the components of a skill as a basis for functional mobility.

Occupational Therapy: Occupational therapy is a therapeutic service designed to address delays in how a child interacts with their environment. Therapists look at the skills needed for children to perform successfully in their lives and in the world. An occupational therapist may assist in identifying areas in which the child’s environment may be adapted to accommodate his or her needs, or in identifying specific adaptive equipment that help with the skills of living independently. One area that occupational therapists often address specifically is the area of fine motor development as it impacts the way a child interacts with their environment. Many of the fine motor skills that an occupational therapist addresses are prerequisites for later acquisitions of reading and handwriting skills, as well as for areas of self-care including dressing, grooming and independent feeding skills. In addressing fine motor skills, an occupational therapist may look at underlying areas that relate to fine motor development including upper extremity and postural strength and stability, muscle tone and motor planning. Other areas an occupational therapist frequently addresses are concerns related to sensory integration, or the body’s and nervous system’s internal organization, modulation, and processing of sensory information. Areas of sensory processing include auditory, vision, smell, taste, touch, perception of gravity and motion of head in space (vestibular) and position and movement of muscles and joints (proprioceptive). During an evaluation an occupational therapist will look at how a child responds to sensory information, including whether he or she has a tendency to over respond or under respond, as well as how a child perceives and discriminates sensory information.

Speech Therapy: Speech and language therapy services are designed to address delays in a child’s communicative abilities. The function of speech and language services is to help a child communicate as best as he/she can given their level of function, and to assist the family and caregivers to “read” their child’s communication, respond, reinforce and expand so that the child and the family can participate together in daily activities and loving social interactions. The main goal of speech and language therapy is to provide a child with ways of communicating their wants and needs. The speech therapist works with the child and their family to enhance the communicative environment through direct therapy and/or preventative treatment and teaches the family how to be their child’s language facilitator. Depending on the child’s needs, the therapist may focus on speech development through sound imitation and production, targeting receptive and expressive language, oral motor skills, pictoral communication systems, sign language, or augmentative communication devices.