Customized Therapy Intensives

At Easterseals DuPage & Fox Valley, we offer customized intensive therapy sessions across our services that are multi-disciplined and highly individualized. For children who are on the cusp of a development milestone, a customized intensive therapy program can be beneficial. These goal-oriented programs are collaborative programs with caregivers and our expert therapy team.

Our intensive therapy format is designed to provide exactly what your child needs to meet specific therapy goals. These goals are determined at the evaluation and are the next step clinically at this time in their life.

To get started with an intensive program at Easterseals, please contact Diana at dldixon@eastersealsdfvr.org or at 630.282.2022.

Current Intensive Programs Include: 


Physical Therapy Intensive

Many children schedule an intensive therapy bout when they are on the verge of a new skill and need strengthening and repetitive practice to attain the skill. An intensive therapy session can help the child and team of caregivers focus on one particular goal that the child is motivated to attain. Intensives can also help with post-operative strengthening and learning new motor patterns within one year of orthopedic surgery. In our experience, criteria that result in the most progress made in an intensive therapy program include:

  • Ability to commit to full attendance for 2-hour therapy sessions, 3 times per week for 5 weeks
  • Physical and emotional endurance to work through 2 consecutive hours of therapy
  • Cognitive ability to make choices for preferred activities and follow basic directions
  • Motivation to move and play


Feeding Intensive

At Easterseals DuPage & Fox Valley, we understand there may be a need to support your child's feeding abilities in a more unique way. Customizing an intensive therapy episode, based on multi-disciplinary assessments including nutrition, occupational, speech language therapies and social work, we are able to create more positive outcomes around your child's particular needs.

Children may benefit if:

  • Your child has a history of difficulties around feeding and nutrition
  • You see signs that sensory issues are interfering with feeding skills. 
  • You see that your child has emotional responses to unfamiliar foods. 
  • You have concerns they are not meeting their nutritional needs with how they currently are eating and drinking.
  • Your child has had challenges with growth over time.
  • You find yourself having to make accommodations different from the family to try and meet your child's nutritional needs.

Treatment planning for an intensive will be 3 weeks in duration and may include all of our services or a single service, depending on the individual needs of each child.

DIR/Floortime Intensive

For children with autism spectrum disorders, often an intensive burst of therapy is found to be effective in developing foundational skills.  We now offer an intensive therapy plan that includes DIR (Developmental Individualized Relationship) based treatments or floortime techniques. 

For children ages 2 -8 years old, the intensive therapies will use a developmental, play-based approach to enhance regulation, social emotional development, play and engagement. After a thorough assessment of your child’s individual profile is completed, the therapy plan may include occupational therapy, speech and language therapy, and social work services depending on the individual's needs.

Speech-Language Apraxia Intensive

Research indicates that frequent and intensive therapy supports children with childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) and other severe speech sound disorders to make significant gains in their communication skills. 

At Easterseals DuPage & Fox Valley, highly trained speech-language pathologists will evaluate your child and determine appropriate goals in an individualized plan of care. Intensive therapy is offered for children ages 4-12 with CAS or other severe speech sound disorders, including phonological or articulation disorders.  Frequency of therapy and length of treatment will be determined by the evaluation. 

Your child might benefit from Intensive Therapy for CAS or other speech sound disorders if he / she:

  • Uses speech that is very hard for others to understand
  • Has difficulty imitating sounds, syllables and words
  • Produces inconsistent speech errors
  • Uses atypical prosody (rhythm or intonation)
  • Pauses between sounds, syllables or words  


Scheduling an Intensive Therapy Session

Please contact Diana at dldixon@eastersealsdfvr.org or Diana Dixon at 630.282.2022.

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