Teaching Parents, Helping Kids

Kathy Carney describes Reaching Milestones as “an agency that provides early intervention to children and their families. We provide services in the homes to support families who have identified that they have concerns with their child.”

After 10 years in Regency Plaza in Concord Township, Reaching Milestones recently moved into Olde Ridge Village Shoppes in Chadds Ford.

Carney — who has a master’s degree in speech and language pathology — and her team provide speech, occupational and physical therapies, plus special instruction for children and their families. While the goal is to improve the child’s health and development, the team engages and trains the families to help them meet those goals whether they involve behavior issues, delayed speech and language, dealing with premature birth issues, feeding and nutrition challenges. They also work with autism issues.

Reaching Milestones currently gets referrals from the Delaware County Early Intervention Program, and that can start at birth, especially with some premature infants who’ve been in NICU, neonatal intensive care.

“If the NICU has suggested they get services in the home to get help so they’re not bringing their babies back to the hospital a lot. It’s a safer environment to go into the home so they don’t get sick again,” she said.

Another significant reason for the home visits is to train the families, the child’s parents, or other caregivers.

“Our going in there once a week isn’t going to make a huge difference unless the family can take part and carry on [when we’re not there].”

As part of that, carney said she and the team members need to know what the parents are or have been doing.

“We can go in and say to the parents, ‘Show me what you’re doing and let’s tweak it some. If that’s not working, what do you think what else might work?’”

And it all depends on what issues the child is having. Some preemies weren’t in utero long enough to develop the ability to suck. Sometimes changing the formula in the food or changing the nipple on the bottle can help.

At other times, when the child is a little older and can swallow and eat, but seems to reject food, Carney said pictures can help. If children push certain foods away, but can’t articulate what they want, putting pictures of different foods on the refrigerator at child-level, children can then point to what they want.

For others, maybe the child isn’t making the sounds involved in learning to speak. She said the reaction to COVID hampered some of that development. Kids weren’t socialized outside the home and weren’t exposed to hearing different people and the masking prevented them from watching how the human mouth works in forming words and speaking.

“It’s a way of getting parents to think about it themselves so I’m not just telling them right away what to do,” she said.

In short, she said, they help teach the parents how to help teach their child.

Currently working with kids from birth to 3 years of age, Carney said they hope to expand the age group and have already started the expansion when it comes to speech therapy. They also get calls from past client families who start noticing other issues developing after age 3 and want the Reaching Milestones team to do an assessment.

For those kids in the birth to 3 range when referred through the county, services are taxpayer-funded if there’s a referral.

For more detailed information about services, Reaching Milestones is open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, or by appointment. The address is 100 Ridge Road, Suite 37, Olde Ridge Village Shoppes, Chadds Ford, PA 19317. Carney can be reached at 484-832-3005, or via email at info.reachingmilestones@gmail.com. The website is https://www.reachingmilestonestherapy.com.