Feeding Evaluations and Treatment

Comprehensive Feeding Evaluations

Evaluations are essential for children whose feeding skills are depressed due to hyper/hyposensitivity to different types of food, weakness in the oral cavity or medical reasons including food allergies and reflux. Depending on the severity of the child’s needs, the evaluation may be done by any number of the members of our multidisciplinary feeding team. To fully evaluate all aspects of feeding, a Case Manager/Pediatric Nurse, Speech Pathologist, Occupational Therapist, Physical Therapist and Nutritionist or Dietician make up our feeding team. If your child is truly a regimented eater without any medical concerns, an abbreviated evaluation may be performed. Each child is carefully considered before we make any recommendations for an evaluation session.

Feeding Treatment

Our facility uses a Sequential-Oral-Sensory Feeding Approach paired with our professional expertise regarding feeding and oral motor skills. We conduct a comprehensive individualized program.

We have seen significant growth in most children who have received services at our center. If we feel that your child will not be a good candidate for our program, we will communicate that to you at the time of the evaluation, and will give you recommendations appropriate for your child.

Parents are an essential part of our success. For the first three weeks, we provide training sessions for the parents so that the techniques used in therapy can assist the child in all other meal settings. We consider parent education to be crucial to the child’s improvement and the therapist will discuss the child’s treatment and progress with the parent after each session. Weekly logs are also completed by parents to assist with keeping track of new foods.  After 3 months, all professionals involved will closely examine the goals previously set and what accomplishments the child has made and provide the parents with a written progress report.

Please Contact the Feeding Center to schedule an appointment or speak with a therapist.