The Pediatric Feeding Disorders Program’s outpatient services help parents and children who regularly face stressful meal times identify the feeding approaches that work well for their individual needs.

Outpatient services are less intensive/frequent than our day program or inpatient program. They can be used in the following ways:

  • As an initial step to see whether more intensive therapy is needed
  • As an opportunity to continue follow-up services after day or inpatient therapies are completed

Good Candidates for Outpatient Feeding Disorders Treatment:

The Feeding Disorders Outpatient Program is recommended for children whose meal time behavior is regularly problematic, but their nutritional status is not severely impaired.

What Feeding Disorders Outpatient Treatment Looks Like:

  • Children are usually seen by behavioral psychology once or twice per week. The majority of the feeding therapy is implemented by parents and other caregivers at home, using approaches we identify during outpatient sessions.
  • Our speech and occupational therapy specialists provide oral motor therapy for children who may have skill deficits that are preventing them from eating a wide variety of foods and textures.
  • We monitor your child’s progression on a regular basis. If your child is not progressing through outpatient services and more frequent integrated services are needed, we may recommend moving him or her to our day program.
  • If your child was previously in our inpatient program or day program, we often use outpatient services as a way to reinforce feeding progress until eating becomes routine.

Establishing Feeding Disorder Treatment Goals:

Because each child’s feeding needs are different, we use our evaluation process to create a treatment plan with individual goals.

Our team works with you to develop measurable goals that allow us to objectively track your child’s progress.

Typical feeding disorder outpatient goals include the following:

  • Improve your child’s acceptance and consumption of food
  • Build oral motor and feeding skills
  • Treat associated medical conditions that make feeding difficult
  • Train parents and other caregivers how to implement the behavioral approaches that have been identified for their child; and how to maintain them on an ongoing basis