PROJECT NARRATIVE

Project Narrative

Sarah London

Department of Public Health, Georgia College and State University

KINS 4306- Internship In Public Health

Dr. Ernie Kaninjing

April 22nd, 2023

PROJECT NARRATIVE
2
This semester I had the privilege of doing my final internship at a pediatric therapy clinic

called SenseAbilities. It is based in Warner Robins, Georgia, and specializes in Occupational

Therapy, Speech Language Pathology, and Physical Therapy. The patient population at

SenseAbilities includes all children from birth to the age of 21. Sensibilities were first founded in

2012, and then moved locations in 2014, to accommodate its increase in patient intake.

Throughout my time at SenseAbilities, I learned that they currently serve around 1,000 patients

and their families. As a part of my project, I decided to do a needs assessment of the top few

areas where patients travel from, because some patients travel up to an hour to come to the clinic.

When doing the needs assessment on the different counties, I found some similar characteristics

about the areas that patients live in. A majority of SenseAbilitie’s patients come from low

socioeconomic status households. In addition to that, the average household income is lower than

many other areas in GA. What I found in the needs assessment was a large part of what inspired

me to choose my project.

During Christmas time, SenseAbilites hosts an annual Breakfast with Santa for the

families and patients of SenseAbilites to come to. They do this because alot of the children who

come to SenseAbilites don’t have the opportunity to have the “perfect” Christmas every year like

most children do. The event is free, pictures with Santa are free, and breakfast is free because the

event is run by staff members. My inspiration came from this event because I wanted to do

something similar for Easter. Because a majority of the SenseAbilites patients come from lower-

income households, alot of them don’t get to celebrate the holidays, or maybe even their

birthdays in a traditional way.

For my project, I wanted to plan something where children could do an easter egg hunt,

while also being able to learn and excel in the goals they have for their therapy. So, instead of
PROJECT NARRATIVE
3
coming up with an entire easter egg hunt event, that every family and patient could attend, I

created an individual patient session plan that therapists could personalize for each patient based

on their discipline, goals, and characteristics. Each therapist, both occupational and speech,

received a basket filled with easter eggs, and different activities and cards that they could use to

fill the eggs, based on the patient’s goals. I wanted to make something that was similar to an

easter egg hunt but included fun activities that patients could do that will help work towards their

goals. It took a while to figure out what activities and cards to put in the Occupational therapy

and speech therapy baskets because there are so many goals that patients work on. So, after

consulting with the therapists I decided on the top 4 most common goals that most patients have

for each discipline and made activities and cards that go along with those goals.

For speech therapy, the top 4 most common goals and skills I decided to focus on are

articulation goals, articulation blend goals, expressive language goals, and receptive language

goals. For the articulation goals, I included cards of articulation letters such as S, Z, Th, L, and

K because those are the most common articulation letters that patients work on. By including

cards kids are able to use repetition to improve their articulation sounds for those specific letters.

For the articulation blend goals, I included word cards for articulation blends such as L and S. I

chose those blend words because those are the most common articulation blends that patients

work on. By including blend cards kids are once again able to use repetition to improve their

articulation blend sounds for those specific letters. For Expressive Language goals, I included

Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How question cards. In speech therapy, goals to improve

expressive language delays include helping patients develop the use of language by expanding

vocabulary, discovering sentence sequences, and learning about associations and word meaning.

By including WH question cards, patients are able to work on all of these goals to help improve
PROJECT NARRATIVE
4
their expressive language. Lastly, for receptive language, I included an interactive dry-erase page

with one and two-step direction cards. I included both one and two-step cards so it is adaptable

based on what the patient is working on. You are able to see picture of all of these on my website

down below.

For the Occupational therapy basket, it was a little bit more difficult to think of items to

include in the basket. This is because Occupational Therpay focuses on improving motor

movement that includes a patient's entire body rather than just muscles and movement in the

mouth. So, once again, I talked to the therapists and they helped me come to a conclusion of

what the 4 most common goals are that Occupational therapy patients have, at Senseabilties.

They include Balance and Body Awareness, Gross Motor Skills and Motor Planning Skills, Fine

Motor Skills, and Visual Motor Integration. For balance and body awareness goals/skills, I

included cards that have different yoga poses on them. I included yoga poses that range from

easy to difficult so activity is adaptable based on the patient. The yoga poses include instructions

on how to get into the poses, which helps with body awareness, and the poses themselves help

with balance. For gross motor and motor planning skills, which are skills that require whole-

body movement and involve the large muscles of the body, I included bilateral coordination

cards. These cards involve movements like crab walks, bear crawls, hopscotch, grapevine, and

others that work the entire body and require motor planning skills to be worked as well. For fine

motor skills, which are skills that require movement of the smaller muscles of the body, like in

your hands, I included pompom and tweezer activities as well as a bead and string activity. These

activities both require a patient to use their smaller muscles to complete them. Lastly, for visual

motor integration which are skills that include visual perception, motor control, and hand-eye

coordination, I created an interactive instruction sheet that includes tracing, coloring, and
PROJECT NARRATIVE
5
drawing. This helps with visual motor integration because the patient is able to translate a visual

plan (the instruction cards) and translate it into an accurate visual image or motor plan. You are

able to see pictures of all of these on my website down below.

The week of the event went very well. A total of 92 patients were able to participate in

my event and I am so happy with that number. I was able to be very interactive with the patients

during the week of the event and I loved being able to see how happy my project made them.

After the project, I sent out a Google form to the therapist so I could receive feedback. I received

amazing feedback from the therapists about how creative the project was and how they can't wait

to use it in the future. However, when looking back, if I could make the project even more

adaptable to different patients I would. I hope in the future I can use my project, once I become a

speech therapist and continue to improve it so I can make the patient population who is able to

do it larger.