Paediatric Physiotherapy
Paediatric Physiotherapy helps a child or young person reach their full potential by providing physical intervention, advice and support.
What to expect at your first Paediatric Physiotherapy appointment:
Your child’s first appointment will include a detailed examination to establish how we might be able to help. When you arrive you will be asked to complete a consent form and answer a few questions.
The first part of the appointment will involve us asking you and your child some questions. Some of the things we may ask about include:
- Your child’s development
- Medical history and any medications they may be taking
- School life and hobbies
- Any pain, and how it is affecting them
- Any injuries or investigations they may have had
Next, we will complete a physical assessment of your child. It is important that we can look at how they move so they may want to wear or bring shorts. Babies will need to be undressed to an appropriate level but we will make sure they are kept nice and warm throughout.
Depending on the age of the child we may use games and toys to engage them and make the session more fun.
Once the assessment is complete, we will discuss the findings with you. Then we will work out a plan based on the things that are most important to you and your child. Sometimes this involves things for you and/or child to do at home. For older children and teenagers we will try and build treatments around their hobbies and make them sports specific if appropriate. As well as treatments we will also provide education and offer lots of advice.
Some of the treatments we may use include:
- Developmental play programmes
- Massage and soft tissue techniques
- Muscle strengthening
- Stretching programmes
- Core stability and pilates based exercises
- Postural assessment and re-education
- Proprioceptive exercises
- Gait analysis and re-training
- Taping
- Rehabilitation programmes
- Carer training
- Equipment and orthoses
- Pain management programmes
- Hot and cold therapy
If required we can also contact your GP to discuss other services or professionals that may need to be involved. You will be able to ask any questions that you may have at any point within the session.
Every child and family is different so each appointment will vary considerably.