Rehabilitative Services

Lurie Children’s provides comprehensive rehabilitative services for children who present with atypical development or acquired impairment due to disease or injury. We specialize in assessment and treatment of children’s motor skills, communication skills, hearing, feeding and swallowing. Our dedicated clinicians work to help children return to their previous functional status, as well as gain new skills and abilities that they aren’t able to learn on their own.

Our 120 healthcare professionals, with an average of 13 years of clinical experience, make our division one of the most experienced pediatric rehabilitative care teams in the region. Our specialists treat conditions of any severity, from minor to complex. We treat more than 53,000 infants, c​hildren and teenagers each year as outpatients, in addition to providing in-hospital care.

Rehabilitative Services includes the departments of audiology, occupational therapy, physical therapy and speech-language pathology. Unlike many other rehabilitative services, our division has its own on-site orthotics-prosthetics department.

Approach

Our clinicians use developmentally appropriate therapeutic equipment, games and toys to make therapy sessi​ons enjoyable and interesting for your child. We strongly believe in family-centered care and value input from parents regarding activities they think might be most beneficial for their child. We believe that parents are our partners in their child’s care and we willingly incorporate parent’s goals into treatment sessions. We involve the whole family in all phases of care by instructing and empowering parents to help their child realize their fullest potential.

The division shares knowledge and provides many continued educational opportunities to ensure staff competency.​ Additionally, we actively participate in research projects. 

 Current studies include:

• Benefits of the cochlear implant in both ears of young deaf children
• Effects on function of a spinal brace in children with spina bifida​ and a deformed spine
• Pediatric voice changes due to nasal obstruction
• The impact of implementing an infant-driven feeding program on oral feeding and growth outcomes of medically fragile infants in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit​

Our experienced clinical staff is committed to training the rehabilitation professionals of the future. We provide supervised clinical education ​experiences to students, externs, clinical fellows, residents and new graduates in all rehabilitative service areas.