Early in the pandemic, Variety, the Children’s Charity, found themselves in a bind. St. Louis was under a new stay-at-home order, and no one knew how long it would last. Variety needed to find a way to provide speech, occupational, and physical therapy to children with special needs who could no longer see their therapists in person. Many of the children are immunocompromised or have health issues which made them especially susceptible to Covid-19.
“They would normally go to a therapy place, or a lot of them would have therapists go to the home,” said Brian Roy, Executive Director of Variety to FOX2 Now. “If you’re making progress in your different therapies, the idea of several months of stopping and the child regressing…; well, you want to keep doing that.”
Mr. Roy knew that they could not just wait out the pandemic before having speech, physical, or occupational therapy again. “It’s something that’s an ongoing and critical need,” he said.
E-Therapy gets Variety kids back in therapy online
E-Therapy worked with Variety, and in only eight days, online therapy, known as teletherapy, was added to their TherHappy Kids program.
During these virtual physical, occupational, and speech therapy sessions, Variety Kids build on skills they have already learned and work on new exercises, all from the safety of their homes. E-Therapy’s expert teletherapists teach parents how to help their child from home, and give them continual support. Each therapist also works to make every session fun and engaging while adjusting all activities to fit the child’s specific needs.
“Parents were struggling, and we know there was a big sigh of relief to say, ‘Here’s a solution’,” said Roy.
Watch the special report from Fox 2 Now:
E-Therapy can help you
E-Therapy provides teletherapy services to charities like Variety, schools, and school districts across the nation and has been doing so for more than a dozen years. During Covid-19 school closures in the spring, and now with school reopening, E-Therapy is busy training school-based therapists to become expert teletherapists using their state-of-the art teletherapy platform, STAR.If your school needs teletherapy help, please contact us.
