A combination of therapies including physical, occupational, speech, music, and therapeutic recreation are used to help each child reach his or her goal. Each therapy contributes something to the process. Swimming, of course, is also fun. Hitting a drum with a drum stick to keep beat with the music in music therapy might lead to holding a spoon. Researching to strum hanging chimes can help build arm strength, which then can lead to other things.
Music too is fun.
Just as therapy can be fun, fun can also be therapy. Trips to Hershey Amusement Park, fishing trips, outings to Triple A major league baseball games, and the excitement of Challenger Little League all help to make the residents' therapy fun. But this fun is, indeed, therapy and an important part of St. Joseph's active treatment program. Never content to feel enough is being done, St. Joseph's decided, over 20 years ago, to take all that it had learned about providing services to children and adults with disabilities into the community. There were many families in need of St. Joseph's assistance but were not interested specifically in admission to the Center.