Interning at the Boston Ability Center gave us an inside look at how therapy for young children was performed, and it was a very educational experience for both of us. The center consists of two facilities and specializes in speech, occupational, and physical therapy for young children. Our internships lasted three weeks, during which we helped with intensive individual therapy programs and the Constraint-Induced Movement Therapy Camp.
The Boston Ability Center facilities were designed to be fun, engaging, and versatile for therapy. Each location featured a huge gym full of swings, bikes, a ball pit, a zipline, and more items to engage children. The space allowed kids to run around freely and burn off energy and gave them the freedom to explore and choose activities that suited their interests. There were also many smaller rooms that were used if a child needed to do an activity that was less physical in a quiet, secluded area. Children would typically use those rooms if they were playing a board game or painting a picture.
The Boston Ability Center Facilities
For his first two weeks at the Boston Ability Center, Chris worked as a clinician’s assistant for intensive therapy sessions. Specifically, he helped with speech, occupational, and physical therapy. He had the privilege of being with the same child for these two weeks, so he was able to observe the child’s progress as he improved. Chris arrived around 30 minutes early to help set up the activities for the day and stayed 30 minutes after the session to help clean up. During the sessions, Chris’s tasks varied depending on what the child did. During physical therapy, for example, Chris would often follow the child around the gym area of the facility as the child practiced balancing on wobble boards, played on swings, and completed obstacle courses. During speech and occupational therapy, which involved less physical activity, Chris prompted the child to complete certain tasks, such as blowing bubbles, building sandcastles, and verbally answering questions.
Chris cleaning up after a therapy session
A unique aspect of the Boston Ability Center’s approach to therapy was that the sessions were mostly child-led, with clinicians often adapting their curriculum around the child’s interests. For example, the child that I worked with particularly enjoyed playing with sensory stimuli such as paint, water, and shaving cream, so during occupational therapy sessions, the clinicians had the child paint toy animals, spray water onto paper, and fill bowls with shaving cream. These sessions often got messy, but the child didn’t seem to mind. At the end of these sessions, the clinicians wrote notes describing what skills the child had practiced and how he had improved from the previous session so that the parents of the child were well-informed about what the therapy sessions were like.
I assisted in the Constraint-Induced Movement Therapy (CIMT) Camp for all three weeks, while Chris joined only for the last week. During this summer camp, children affected by Hemiplegia (paralysis of half the body) came to the facility for three hours for physical and occupational therapy. To promote the use of movement and function of their weaker side, the children were casted on their stronger side.
A day at camp was organized into three hours: An individual physical therapy session, an individual occupational therapy session, and a “camp hour.” For the therapy sessions, Chris and I were both paired with a child and a clinician to assist the clinicians, similarly to how Chris had assisted during intensive therapy sessions.
The “camp hour”, which was often the children’s favorite part of the camp, was when all the campers came together as a group to complete group activities that promoted gross and fine motor skills. Each day had a theme that each of the activities for that day were modeled after. For example, a theme that the campers particularly enjoyed was “pirate day,” which included digging through a box of sand to find golden coins and shiny gems, a scavenger hunt around the gym, and reading a pirate storybook.
The work done at the BAC is truly amazing and the level of passion and thoughtfulness the staff brings every day makes it possible. So being a part of the BAC and getting to see the work that is done up close was truly an invaluable experience for us both. Thank you to Mr. Schlenker and Ms. Jan Wade for allowing this amazing internship to happen, and also to MacKenzie Rickert for overseeing and planning our internships!
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