In 2022, Comprehensive Therapy Center (CTC) received a three-year $75,000 grant to support Therapy & Fun, a summer program for children ages 3-14 with developmental differences that provides summer speech, occupational, and dance-movement therapy through games and social activities. The program is designed to reduce the “summer setback” many children with disabilities experience by keeping up with specific therapeutic goals while providing much-needed respite for parents during summer break.
Hear from Executive Director Ellen Sawyer, Programs Director Sarah Miller, and Development Director and CTC parent Savana Beal as they share their insights into Therapy & Fun.
Name and role with the organization:
Ellen Sawyer, Executive Director
Brief overview of your organization and who you serve:
Founded in 1982, Comprehensive Therapy Center’s mission is to meet the therapeutic and educational needs of adults and children with disabilities who are at risk or disadvantaged, through skill building, academic enhancement, and social emotional support. Our goal is to help adults keep or increase their independence and help children walk, talk, learn, and play.
Please provide an overview of Therapy & Fun and how the program came to be.
Our founder, Jean Silbar, created the Therapy & Fun program to address the concept of summer slide. This is a phenomenon that all children experience over the summer months when they are not in school. They lose a little bit of what they learned during the school year.
However, children with developmental disabilities experience this in a much more challenging way. It take a neurotypical child just a week or two to remember how to operate in a school schedule, navigate transitions, or recall academic skills they have not thought about in several weeks. For a child with developmental differences, this often takes months rather than weeks. Therapy & Fun allows these children to receive support, very much the same as the special education support received during the school year, during the summer months and helps them to be ready for the upcoming school year.
What are its primary goals?
Therapy & Fun’s primary goal is to bridge the gap between school years for children with developmental disabilities such as Autism, ADHD, Down Syndrome, sensory differences, or speech and language challenges. Their needs do not stop during the summer months even though services often do. Therapy & Fun allows the participating children to engage in a fun, day camp like setting, and still receive speech and occupational therapies that address their unique needs.
What does a typical day look like for participants?
When clients first arrive at Therapy & Fun, they are met with a buddy (teenage volunteer) who will escort them through their day. They participate in gross motor, fine motor, individual speech, and group speech therapies. These therapies are supplemented with arts and crafts, music, and reading groups to encourage the social skills and fun that is built into the program. The participants move classes every 30 minutes and make friends along the way. Of course, we have snack time and some free time on the playground as well.
How does this program support children and families?
Therapy & Fun allows for the participants to receive speech and occupational therapies in a fun and relaxed environment during summer months. It also allows for some respite for their families. Children participating in this program are often high needs and even more so during months when their schedules are not regular and they are not receiving additional support to address their unique challenges. Therapy & Fun offers some regularity to their summer break while offering support. And it gives parents a chance to know that their high needs child is being cared for in a safe and loving space while they are able to take a break.
How has youth/parent voice shaped this project over time?
Each summer we ask parents for feedback on their experience with the program. We evaluate their suggestions and apply them moving forward whenever we can. Sometimes they are easy, like making sure we have coffee at the caregiver support groups, and sometimes they are much more impactful like making sure that our therapists have an easy way of connecting with caregivers throughout the summer and not just at discharge conferences. We also ask clients that are able to offer feedback what they would like to have done differently. While we have gotten some great ideas, like making sure the same volunteer buddy greets clients every day, we have also gotten some ideas (like trying to get dinosaurs for them to pet) that we have not been able to implement.
Please describe the work that you’ve engaged in so far and your hopes for the work through the remainder of the grant period.
During our time with the Steelcase Foundation grant, we have been able to expand our program to include social emotional support. These funds have made it possible to have social workers involved with children who struggle with behavioral issues, transitions in and out of the program, or other challenges that prevent them from participating in their therapies. In addition to added staff, we have been able to increase the number of clients we serve from 40 to 56 because of the support from the Steelcase Foundation. These funds allowed for more space and staff which ultimately allowed for more program participation.
What have you learned and what might you share with other organizations committed to supporting children and families?
In the past few years, we have seen an emphasis on being inclusive and neurodiverse affirming. If I could share something with other organizations, it’s to remember that people of all abilities have something to offer and the right to feel like they belong there. Having a space created with you in mind is different than being welcomed into a space that wasn’t meant for you and you don’t really fit. Therapy & Fun is a space created knowing that no two participants will have the same needs. I would encourage all organizations to remember that people with developmental differences should fit into their space, too.
How does this work impact the Steelcase Foundation’s overarching mission of cultivating communities where children can thrive?
Therapy & Fun is one way that children in our community with disabilities can find success. The support of the Steelcase Foundation has meant that we can continue that work on a greater scale and allow for more families and more children to do more than survive the summer break, waiting for school to be back in session. Therapy & Fun means that some of these children will get to experience day camps, make new friends, and hit goals that will prepare them for the upcoming school year.
Is there anything else you’d like to lift up about this work?
Thank you to the Steelcase Foundation for believing that our program participants are worth investing in! These children have so many challenges. It’s incredible to be able to say that they have one less thing to overcome because of this partnership.
Name and role with the organization:
Sarah Miller, for the past 2 years I served as the Programs Director for Comprehensive Therapy Center
Please provide an overview of Therapy & Fun and the program came to be.
Therapy & Fun is a summer program the provides Speech Therapy, Occupational Therapy, and Mental Health Supports for children who receive these services through their school, but over the school break the therapy is paused. This program was started in 1982 when the founder of CTC noticed a profound loss of skills in the children she was working with at schools. So she began the program to help support children and their families year round to prevent the “summer slide” and help children with developmental differences continue to get the help they need even when school was not in session.
What does a typical day look like for participants?
Our clients arrive first thing in the morning, and they get a chance to run around and play before they head inside and the work beings. All morning, they rotate through multiple different therapies and activities including individual sessions, group sessions, and activities like Arts and Crafts or Music that support all of their therapy goals, but the work is disguised as fun! And by noon they are picked up and rest up to get ready to do it again the next day!
How has youth/parent voice shaped this project:
Our program is ever evolving to meet the needs of the families we serve. We started a Caregiver Coffee Hour based on the feedback we received from families about wanting/needing more support from others like them with children with developmental differences. We are also always noticing what interests our clients, and work to incorporate that into their therapies or beyond. For example, we noticed that so many of our clients loved dinosaurs and knew so much about them, so this past summer our theme was dinosaurs and the look on their faces when they saw all of the pictures and activities we had for them could have lit up an entire city!
Please describe the work that you’ve engaged in so far and your hopes for the work through the remainder of the grant period:
We have been able to work with so many children and families, and have been able to provide services to them that they otherwise would not have been able to afford, or insurance would not help cover the services. My hope is that we can expand the number of families that we serve and work with.
How does this work impact the Steelcase Foundation’s overarching mission of cultivating communities where children can thrive?
By being able to offer these services to children and families who are at-risk or disadvantaged we are removing barriers, and helping give access to therapies that help children learn new skills they need to be able to attend to school, and build friendships. We are also providing support to the whole family, so that they feel their best in taking care of their child’s needs. We have had so many success stories come out of our program, and have had teenagers graduate from our services after having been a part of the program for 10 years or more. And those teenagers have so many skills, and so much confidence in themselves that they are able to thrive in school and out in the community, and are even in a position to give back to others themselves.
Name and role with the organization.
Savana Beal, Development Director and CTC Parent
Please provide a brief overview of your child’s experience participating in Therapy & Fun.
My name is Savana Beal, and I am the Development Director at Comprehensive Therapy Center (CTC) – but more importantly, I’m also a mom to two amazing boys, ages 9 and 6. My youngest son, Remy, has a rare disease that causes developmental delays and makes him non-speaking.
About 3.5 years ago, our family made a big move from Los Angeles, CA, to Grand Rapids, MI. Before we arrived, I spent countless hours researching medical facilities and therapy clinics to ensure that Remy could continue receiving the essential therapies he needed—speech, occupational therapy, and more. While Michigan does offer early childhood intervention services, we quickly realized they were much more limited compared to what we were used to in California. Instead of the 15 hours per week Remy had been receiving, we were down to just one.
In my search for other options, I found Comprehensive Therapy Center, and it truly felt like a lifeline. I enrolled Remy in Therapy & Fun program right away. That first summer in Michigan, Remy had an incredible time. Not only did he receive the services he needed to thrive, but I also found support through the weekly Caregiver Coffee Hour. For the first time in a long time, I felt seen, understood, and like we had found a community where we truly belonged.
This past summer was Remy’s fourth summer with the program, and he has also participated in the spring and winter sessions during school breaks. It’s been such a joy to see him flourish. His older brother, Wade, even had the opportunity to volunteer at Therapy & Fun, where he earned over 60 hours of community service! Our family has become passionate advocates for CTC, and when the chance came for me to work here, I knew that my personal journey had led me to this moment.
What have you learned and what might you share with other organizations committed to supported children and families?
CTC fills in the gaps for children like Remy, ensuring that they not only continue to learn but also thrive in their schools and beyond. They serve at-risk communities by offering a sliding scale for services and accepting Medicaid, something many clinics don’t do. What makes CTC so special is that they accept each child as they are—helping them to walk, talk, learn and play. Every child is treated as the worthy, whole person they are.
