Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Vanessa Felcman . We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Vanessa , appreciate you joining us today. To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard

Our vision is to provide a SPACE where pediatric treatment options are Comprehensive, Convenient and Innovative. Tired of watching families needing to make a choice between critical therapy services such as speech or occupational therapy so that their child could participate in recommended full time Applied Behavior Analysis, we wanted to bring all critical services under one roof. Parents do not have to make a choice on which treatment modality may work for their child, they can participate in any and all recommended services and do this in one place! The outcome is convenience and truly comprehensive programming. Our teams meet weekly to review and collaborate on the children we see, on necessary tools such as augmentative communication or sensory supports that benefit the program, and build relationships between the departments for overall increased quality of care. Children who participate in our comprehensive program have the benefit of experienced clinicians communicating and sharing tools that support the child during the time that they are at the clinic.

Innovation means that we do not discount any treatment modalities as we are open to learning what strategies help each child at any given time. We are the only pediatric clinic in Houston that offers the Developmental Individual Differences Relationship (DIR) Model and Applied Behavior Analysis in the same location. While these two models of treatment are known for the vast differences, as a team, our clinicians learn from each other, find similarities, and put together a program that is ideal and tailored for each child.

Vanessa , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I am a speech pathologist, now with 20 years of experience. Not everyone is able to say that they love their job, but I am truly thankful to have found a profession that allows me to continue learning, stays exciting, and is able to provide support to children and their families in so many ways. Earlier in my career, my understanding of speech was more general, we treat articulation, pragmatic and language disorders. However, the truth is that we can support fluency, feeding, augmentative communication and even infants with breastfeeding! I love when people ask me, “How do you provide speech therapy to a 9 month old?” In truth, communication and feeding skills begin at birth and as speech pathologists, we can support our families from the very beginning.

I was lucky to begin my career as a new speech pathologist, while learning the Developmental Individual Differences Relationship (DIR) Model from one of the Co Founders, Dr Serena Wieder, when I started at Texas Children’s Hospital. The model and the learning taught me that the foundation to learning begins with regulation and engagement with the child. I learned the six functional emotional developmental levels that allowed me to make connections with children and their parents at the start of my career! This model has guided our practice and supports our ability to utilize other modalities of treatment, because we have a good understanding of how to build a foundation that supports learning. I am proud that my business partner and I, Michelle Reed continue to follow and develop our learning in the DIR Model and that we have the opportunity to share this magic with our team at SPACE and with the families that we support.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

In 2020, like most businesses and pediatric clinics, we were very much impacted by covid 19. However, unlike many businesses, we had just completed a merge, changed our name from Family First Speech Therapy and Kids Connect Occupational Therapy to SPACE Therapy Gym, rebranded with a new website and were prepared to move into a new building under construction!

In March 2020, we decided to close our clinic for direct care services in order to protect our staff and our children, many with compromised immune systems. Our staff showed initiative and innovation, switching to telehealth services within two days. While I heard many pediatric business owners express their challenges and complaints with telehealth therapy services, we watched our team excel and use telehealth as an opportunity. As clinicians that are trained in the Developmental Individual Differences Relationship (DIR) Model, we were very familiar with parent coaching. We used this opportunity to “be in the home” as a parent coach. Clinicians coached the parents to positively utilize the time at home by setting up the home environment for success and setting up games and movement activities to increase positive motor work, language and interaction between the child and even their siblings. We were were stunned by the clinicians’ and the parents’ creativity and planning and received so many pictures of happy families utilizing their telehealth therapy sessions. Telehealth gave our clinicians an opportunity to empower our parents as the number one play partner and advocate for their child.

Have you ever had to pivot?

With the opening of our new clinic space in June 2020, we prepared extensively to provide new services in our multilevel open gym. After eighteen months of planning, we were prepared to offer open play opportunities, classes and camps with a vision to offer an inclusive place for families and children to connect through movement and fun. Our website provided glimpses of these opportunities and our staff worked diligently to create the new service line procedures and curriculum for these social opportunities.

However, due to covid, it was not safe to open our space to large groups and our new focus was to minimize exposure and social distance within our new large space. Instead of adding these new services, we used our larger space to spread out, maintain distance and focus on the safety of our therapy kiddos and staff. Over the course of a year, we focused on our therapy services, our procedures and work flow within the new clinic space, and provided virtual classes via Zoom! What could have been a very disappointing time, became a time for reflection. Ultimately, we decided not to offer the new services. Instead we decided to transform the fun and exciting gym in order to do what we do best, and that is to provide pediatric speech therapy, occupational therapy, physical therapy and applied behavior analysis. With a little creativity, we transformed separate gym spaces into pretend play nooks, sectioned off areas to provide an open therapy concept in larger gym spaces and smaller gym spaces. The gym is now an area that we use to encourage individual work and group interactions for the children who can benefit from peer play. The challenges of 2020 allowed us to pivot and reflect on our core strength as a clinic. Instead of getting distracted by other opportunities, we focus continuously on how to improve the experience for children receiving our pediatric therapy services.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.spacetherapygym.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/spacetherapygym/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SPACETherapyandGym
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/space-therapy-and-gym-houston-7

Image Credits
Vivian Chan, Julian Nguyen, and Cris Mireles