KidSense Therapy Group In Milford Looks Past Pandemic Challenges

MILFORD — In an ideal world, children receiving crucial services such as occupational therapy in school could be serviced entirely inside school and during school hours. What often happens instead is that the children will "time out" of the system, needing more work than school therapists are able to supply.

When that happens, parents, pediatricians and the schools themselves often turn to services outside the school district, such as KidSense Therapy Group, at 209 Cherry Street in Milford.

KidSense has been in Milford for the past 10 years, and under its current management, for the last five. It has a staff of around 20 specialists who include occupational therapists, speech-language pathologists, physical therapists, social cognition experts, executive functioning coaches, feeding therapists, and mental health counselors.

"The therapists within the schools don't have the time to dedicate to give kids a proper session," according to KidSense spokeswoman Sara North. Often KidSense therapy will supplement the work of the in-school therapists, who are usually constrained by the length of classes.

"The schools will continue to work with the children, but they just don't have the time and staff to dedicate like we would," North said.

KidSense shut down along with most every other business at the top of the coronavirus outbreak, reopened with a hybrid mix of therapies, and has been slowly climbing back to full strength. North said the business is now "fairly close" to its pre-pandemic client level.

Part of the long slog back was the learning curve associated with teletherapy. Was such a thing even possible for the type of hands-on work necessary to occupational and physical therapists?

"It was very overwhelming at first," co-owner Jennifer Bosma told Patch. "Many of our clinicians jumped in with two feet and started frantically researching, taking webinars, and downloading materials in order to prepare and educate ourselves on how to deliver quality services in this platform. Many have shared that they all felt they were back in 'school' and were pushed out of their comfort zone. Now we can reflect and honestly share how grateful we are to have this platform to deliver our services and actually feel this model has been surprisingly great."

In-person therapy is still preferred, Bosma said, but she is "grateful" to now have the option of serving her clients even when they might be sick and unable to come to a KidSense physical location.

The therapy company may have conquered the first hurdle of Pandemic Business Life with panache, but the second is far more sinister, and enduring.

"We feel everyone has been significantly impacted by this pandemic, not so much in a positive or negative manner, but we are just different now. How this plays out for the future generation is tough to predict," co-owner Amanda Griffith said. "What we feel will be difficult will be starting to shift back to more of our 'normal' life, interacting with each other and relationship building."

In other words, if you think you're going to have difficulty readjusting to what the world was like before COVID-19, imagine how the transition will be for those who don't experience that world in the same way the rebuilders envision.

"For our clients that are 'shy' or have difficulty in social situations, this has been their comfort zone and we will have to build these skills back all over again," Griffith said. "Even for the neuro-typicals, this will be a struggle to shift back into a more interactive environment. We all have changed so much during this time, it will be interesting to see how we all move forward as a society."

KidSense is opening a new location at 29 Federal Road in Danbury this spring. The owners say their research show that families in Danbury had been traveling an hour for the type of services KidSense provides, and there was a lot of untapped potential in Hat City. "We felt Danbury was a good hub, there's a lot of medical centers and pediatricians," North said.