There’s a lot more room now for the rolling, tumbling, stretching and other physical activities.
The San Diego County Health and Human Services Agency’s California Children Services (CCS) south medical therapy unit has a new home – and it’s more than twice the size of their prior location.
“This definitely meets the needs of our program,” said Neil Goyal, supervising physical therapist. “It’s at least twice as large as our previous facility.”
CCS is a countywide program that treats children with certain physical limitations and chronic health conditions or diseases such as spina bifida, cerebral palsy and congenital heart disease.
The new facility, on the Kimbrough Elementary School campus in south San Diego, held an open house early this week.
“We have to really thank the San Diego Unified School District,” said Goyal. “They completely refurbished four temporary classrooms using the vision of former supervising physical therapist Kate Page.”
Page drew up plans that included many things the old facility was lacking such as training bathrooms, areas for doctors to come and visit with the therapist and children and wide open spaces for therapy.
Even the room to store medical supplies now has a working space for therapists to create splints or other assistance devices for the children.
“We’ll fabricate things here that are useful to the children,” said Goyal.
Two of the rooms are wide-open spaces where physical and occupational therapists work with children who are learning such skills as walking, stair climbing or rolling. There’s plenty of room for equipment and sections can be closed off with curtains for privacy if needed.
The occupational therapists often work on life skills with the children such as feeding, dressing and grooming. The large bathrooms are very spacious and have showers and bathtubs in them.
“That allows us to have parents try assistive equipment out with their children as see if it meets their needs before they have to go out and purchase it,” said Goyal.
There’s also a full kitchen.
“It’s a training kitchen for teens,” said Goyal. “We teach meal preparation to the older children who are possibly going off to college or want to live on their own.”
One of the most immediately noticeable changes is an ADA-compliant ramp leading up the facility.
“That allows us to do actual, real-life training for children in wheelchairs,” said Goyal. “It’s so much better than trying to simulate going up ramps.
“Our primary motivation is to get the kids as independent as we can.”
The new facility should play a big part in helping CCS toward that goal.
