Outpatient Occupational Therapy Services

We provide occupational therapy services to children who are not hospitalized (outpatients). Patients are treated at the following locations:

Stanford Medicine Children’s Health Specialty Services – Menlo Park
321 Middlefield Road, Suite 130
Menlo Park, CA 94025

Stanford Medicine Children’s Health Specialty Services – Sunnyvale
1195 W. Fremont Avenue
Sunnyvale, CA 94087

Rehabilitation Services – Los Gatos
555 Knowles Drive, Suite 207
Los Gatos, CA 95032

New outpatient appointments

Our Menlo Park clinic has our full offering of services. Our Sunnyvale location primarily offers feeding therapy and biofeedback treatment. 

To schedule a new-patient appointment for your child, we require a referral from your child’s health care provider. Your child’s doctor can use our referral form and call (800) 995-5724 with any questions. Your child’s insurance plan may require an authorization.

The areas and programs below highlight some of the highly specialized therapy services available:

Feeding therapy

Occupational therapists work closely with patients and their families to determine where their child is having difficulties related to eating and swallowing. The goal of feeding therapy is to help make mealtimes easier and more enjoyable. Feeding therapy may be helpful if your child has one or more of the following concerns:

  • Coughing or choking when eating or drinking.
  • Frequent gagging when eating.
  • Difficulty chewing.
  • Difficulty transitioning from one texture to another.
  • Restricted food intake, food refusal, or picky eating.
  • Frequent vomiting associated with feeding or mealtimes.
  • Fussy or irritable behaviors during or after feeding.

Sensory-motor therapy

Sensory processing challenges and sensory-based motor difficulties are often seen in children who have learning or behavior disorders, attention deficit, autism spectrum disorders (ASD), Asperger’s syndrome, or developmental delays. They can also be present in children who are otherwise typically developing.

Our occupational therapists customize our Sensory-Motor Therapy Program based on each child’s unique needs. The program consists of an initial evaluation and four follow-up therapy sessions. Should your child continue to require additional therapy after completion of this program, your therapist will discuss options that may be available for your child.

This program is designed to help a wide variety of children who experience challenges participating in daily activities such as dressing skills, bedtime routines, and play skills. The focus of this program is to provide parents with supportive strategies and useful activities that help the child function in his or her home environment.    

If you prefer a therapist-driven approach that involves specialized clinic activities performed in a sensory integration therapy environment, this program may not be a good fit for you and your child.

In our outpatient clinic, a treatment episode is a set of treatment sessions focused on a particular area of concern, with a defined beginning and end. Some patients may experience several treatment episodes, focused on different areas with specific therapy goals identified for each episode.

After completion of the program, children and families are provided with home program ideas that are intended to allow for time to work on skills learned in therapy. Often, a break in therapy is also helpful to encourage families to focus on other important activities for a while without the demands of attending scheduled therapy sessions. A reevaluation may be recommended about six to nine months later to determine if returning to this program is recommended to address any new concerns.

No, we do not provide traditional sensory integration therapy services. Though some of our clinicians have certifications in sensory integration testing methods, we do not perform the Sensory Integration and Praxis Test (SIPT) in our clinic. Many of our clinicians have extensive knowledge and experience utilizing sensory processing treatment approaches, and our program incorporates many different therapy perspectives that help children with either sensory or motor coordination challenges.

Often, fine motor delays in children can be related to difficulties processing information received from the senses (vision, hearing, touch, taste, smell, balance, etc.). The Sensory-Motor Therapy Program may also be recommended for children with these referral concerns.  

Hand therapy

Our hand therapists evaluate and treat children with a variety of problems related to the upper extremities (shoulders, arms, and hands). Treatment includes:

  • Postoperative wound care.
  • Hand rehabilitation.
  • Nonsurgical injury treatment.
  • Neuromuscular retraining.

Therapy goals focus on improving upper-extremity strength and function, school success, and the ability to perform daily living skills.

Biofeedback

Biofeedback is a treatment modality or tool that can help older children and adolescents learn how to create a calmer state, increase their focus, improve pain management, or improve muscle coordination skills. Occupational therapists trained in biofeedback techniques use a holistic approach to evaluate children to determine if biofeedback would be an effective adjunct to the overall therapy plan of care. Biofeedback is most effective with children 8 years and older and can be used during occupational therapy sessions to help children with:

  • Pain disorders (headaches, abdominal pain, chronic pain syndrome).
  • Anxiety and decreased coping skills.
  • Pelvic floor dysfunction or dyssynergia.
  • Eating disorders (avoidant restrictive food intake disorder, anorexia, bulimia).