Easter Seals Pediatric Clinic Gives Kids with Special Needs a Leg-Up on Success

When Sandy Lovell’s daughter Allie, who has Down syndrome, wasn’t making much progress in speech, Allie began going to the Easter’s Seals Pediatric Clinic in Pelham in order to have therapy and more one-on-one time, Lovell says. Today, at age 8, Allie is speaking in sentences – a lot of them.

“A stranger can now talk to her and understand her,” Lovell says. That’s a big deal to the Lovells. Allie also was born with some hearing loss, so the right hearing aids helped her with this problem.

Allie attends Meadow View Elementary School in Alabaster and is mainstreamed with the rest of the student population. An aide in the classroom helps her with some things, and she sometimes goes to special education sessions, Lovell says. Allie, the only child of Tim and Sandy Lovell, is doing pretty well for a child who was born early with a number of problems. She’s been receiving therapy at Easter Seals for the last two years.

The “new” pediatric clinic in Pelham, now about a year old, is the first dedicated building for the pediatric clinic. It treats children from birth to 21 years old with speech, occupational therapy, physical therapy, assisted feeding therapy, handwriting, cognitive impairment, autism spectrum disorder, Down syndrome, seizure disorders, cerebral palsy, sensory processing disorder, academic difficulties and more, says David Higgins, Easter Seals of Central Alabama’s executive director. For children, occupation therapy includes fine motor skills, such as zipping a zipper, handwriting and even tying shoes.

Patients come to Easter Seals Pediatric Clinic based on referral and word of mouth, Higgins adds, and the clinic therapists create long-term treatment plans for each child based on their goals, benchmarks they should be setting, etc. The clinic accepts most types of insurance and Medicaid and has a sliding payment scale.

The clinic serves Jefferson, Shelby, St. Clair and Chilton counties primarily, but has seen patients from as far away as Marengo County. It sees nearly 400 children a year.

The need for this type of facility seems to be growing as disabilities are rising, Higgins says. Many children need more than one type of therapy at once, so the clinic offers a true interdisciplinary team to handle what each child may need.  

The clinic has a very gifted staff, Higgins says. “They have a heart for what they do.  They put everything into the care and treatment of their patients.”

The local Easter Seals is part of a national nonprofit organization begun in 1907 by Edgar Allen, who lost a son in a streetcar accident, Higgins says. The lack of adequate medical services available to save his son prompted Allen to sell his business and begin a fundraising campaign to build a hospital in his hometown of Elyria, Ohio.

Through this new hospital, Allen was surprised to learn that children with disabilities were often hidden from public view. Inspired by this discovery, in 1919 Allen founded what became known as the National Society for Crippled Children, the first organization of its kind.

The lily – a symbol of spring – was officially incorporated as the Easter Seals logo in 1952 for its association with resurrection and new life and has appeared on each seal since. The local affiliate’s mission, like the national Easter Seals organization, is to help kids with their disabilities and their families.

For more information on the Easter Seals Pediatric Clinic, ask your pediatrician or specialist, and visi http://www.eastersealsbham.org.

Carol Muse Evans is the publisher of Birmingham Parent.