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The Idea Behind The FOCUS Center
Ruth Yaacoby has fifteen years experience as an Occupational Therapist and has been running a private occupational therapy center in Bergen County since 1999. She and her team of therapists focused primarily on the sensory integration approach for intervention.
Over the past 5 years of working with children in the center, Ruth and her team of therapists observed that most children that they have treated have had difficulties in more than one area of performance. They also saw that issues in one area sometimes lead to other concerns. For example, sensory processing difficulties in a child may cause that child to experience social, behavioral and learning problems. So the team took a ‘holistic’ approach to therapy: looking at the child as a ‘whole’ enabled the therapists, parents, and educators to understand the child’s needs in a comprehensive way and therefore provide the highest quality of therapy to the child.
Ruth and the therapists also saw that weekly therapist meetings to discuss a child’s progress and development gave tremendous insight, and resulted in improving the next session with the child. These team meetings were highly valuable and gave the therapists a leap forward in the way they were treating the child.
If weekly meetings were so beneficial, they thought about a customized integrated session based on each child’s individual needs: two different therapists working in real-time together with a child. They had a vision of developing a method that would integrate a variety of disciplines, all complimenting each other: psychotherapy, play groups, occupational therapy, speech therapy, physical therapy, movement groups, yoga, nutrition and learning specialty.
This integrated method is the key to comprehensive and successful therapy. The two therapists can work together in the same session, complimenting each other, and observing the progress of the child, pinpointing what they need to focus on, and how they need to move forward from session to session. At the same time, this approach benefits the child with more intensive therapy and fewer sessions, allowing for the important “down-time” and free play that all children need.
Parents also benefit from the approach of The FOCUS Center. Due to the team approach and integrated sessions, parents who used to disapprove of the lack of communication among all the professionals that would treat their child (including in school) have seen a vast improvement in treatment. Also, by bringing all the therapists under one roof at the FOCUS Center, parents are also thrilled about coming to ONE place and ONE session for treatment, instead of hours of non-stop driving from one professional to another, often compromising on the quality for convenient location.
By combining feedback from parents with her experience and personal and professional philosophy for high-quality child care, Ruth was led to open The FOCUS Center, the Integrated Team Approach for Children.