Come Play, STL is a multidisciplinary pediatric center that serves children and families in St. Louis through a holistic approach, utilizing a multidisciplinary team of medical and behavioral health professionals.
We currently serve children of all ages, ranging from infants to age 17. The children we have treated, and whom we are currently treating, come to us with a variety of challenges. Our experienced clinicians offer help for a variety of challenges, including: Anxiety, Bipolar, Sensory Processing Disorder, Depression, Autism Spectrum Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), struggles with attachment, a challenging transition in life, or various learning disabilities.
Although we began as a primarily pediatric therapy center in order to serve families as a whole, we have now expanded our services to include adult Occupational Therapy, as well as, Couples and Parenting Therapy.
Our therapeutic process begins with an Initial Consultation. We meet with you, the parents and caregivers, to discuss your concerns and goals in order to determine what services your child would benefit most from. This doesn't mean we sign your child up for every service, this means that your child's treatment plan and the services it includes are hand-picked by you and our client intake specialist to maximize progress and help your child graduate from therapy faster! Once we (our client intake specialist and you) have discussed and selected the services that would most benefit your child, evaluations for these services are scheduled before you ever leave that initial meeting.
We now enter what we refer to as the “Evaluation Phase.” For each of your child’s evaluations, our highly trained clinicians will complete comprehensive and individualized assessments, in order to get information about your child as a whole. We will look at their strengths, as well as, areas of difficulty. This assessment phase is spread over 2-3 weeks. During that time, your child will visit Come Play, STL 1-2 times a week for approximately 2-3 hours each visit. This can be flexible, as the length of each visit is dependent on how often your child may need breaks, and how long your child can maintain focus. This is different for every single child that we see! We structure our assessments this way to ensure that we are getting the best information from these sessions and prevent children from getting fatigued and therefore not providing a true picture of their abilities. Almost all of our clients enjoy these assessments and are able to stay alert and focused. Most look forward to coming back at the conclusion of their assessments or don’t want to leave!
Once your child has completed all of their evaluations, a Follow-Up Parent Meeting is held. Each clinician, along with you the parents (and anyone else you feel should attend) will meet to discuss the assessment findings, recommendations, goals, and answer any and all questions you may have. We want you to leave feeling confident and prepared to begin the therapy process.
Our evaluation process is unique (some would say different) but we know that as we seek to best understand a child who has many dimensions, this “difference” is what sets us apart from other clinics and assessment teams.
Once the “Evaluation Phase” is completed, the recurring therapy can begin.
Clinicians and clients will meet 1-2 times per week for 45 minute sessions dependent on the individual needs of your child. Each session consists of 35-40 minutes of the child and therapist working on specifically created activities to help them meet their individual goals and 5-10 minutes at the conclusion of the session discussing with the parent or caregiver about how the session went and reviewing carryover activities to promote generalization of the child’s new skills to the home, school, and other environments.
Throughout the Therapy Phase, with permission, Come Play, STL will relay information to a child's teacher, caregivers, additional family members, and other professionals who are a part of the child's everyday life. Collaboration between ALL professionals is crucial to the success of your child’s therapy. We want to be on the same page as your child’s doctors, teachers, babysitters, and anyone else who contributes to the care and well-being of your child. The clinical team will also seek input from the child, parent(s) or caregiver, and teachers to better understand the child's growth, difficulties, behaviors, and successes in order to identify if goals are being met both within and outside the therapy sessions.
Along with check-ins at the conclusion of the child’s session, we commit to meeting with parents every 6-8 weeks for a Parent Progress Meeting. During this meeting, each of your child’s clinicians will discuss their progress in therapy, hear from you (the parents) about how things are going at home, and provide suggestions for carryover of skills. Parental involvement is an important part of our therapeutic process and we strive to provide parents with the tools and the confidence to help your child use their newly learned skills at school, at home, and everywhere in between. Our goal is for your child to succeed in therapy and beyond!
When your child begins to meet their goals, visits will then be reduced to every other week. Thereafter, when your child continues to maintain growth, visits can be further reduced to once per month, and continue to reduce until they are ready to discharge. To celebrate your child's wonderful achievement of meeting and obtaining their goals, Come Play, STL will conclude therapy with a celebratory party that your child will get to help plan!
We believe "once a client, always a client." We understand that there can be hiccups in developmental growth, and unforeseeable life changes may come along, causing your child to need a "check-up". Therefore, we are here to serve you in those moments whether your child needs to meet with one of our clinicians, or simply to respond to an email or a phone call.