SMALL BUSINESS
Tapping Into an Untapped Therapy Community Therapitas, the largest provider of bilingual services in Oklahoma, recently doubled its Shepherd Center location, and now completes nearly 2,000 play-based therapy visits every week – almost exclusively in its clients’ native language, Spanish. BY DANIELLE OBERLOIER
ROCK CLIMBING. ZIPLINING.
Trampoline jumping. Those activities might not typically register as therapy. But on any given day at a Therapitas pediatric clinic, you’ll see children engaging in play of all kinds, with wide eyes and the sort of laughter you’d hear on a playground. “We emphasize play-based therapy, so if you walk back into a therapy area, you’d probably think that it’s just a bunch of grownups playing with kids all day, and it often is, but it’s play with purpose,” said Kelly Hawkins, Therapitas Director of Clinic Operations. “Children learn best through play, but there is always a goal we are trying to achieve, or a clinical observation being made.” Therapitas, a rapidly growing group of pediatric therapy clinics serving the Latino communities in Oklahoma City and Tulsa, specializes in outpatient speech, as well as occupational and physical therapy aimed at treating the whole child. They started out solely as a bilingual speech and language clinic, but the last five years have brought pivotal growth to the organization – with the addition of occupational and physical therapy services, as well as the opening of a Tulsa location. They are now the largest provider of bilingual therapy services in the state. And they’re poised to grow some more. In May, they held a soft opening for the expansion of their Oklahoma City Shepherd Center location – a move within the center from a 5,000-square-foot space to a 13,000-square-foot space. As if that jump was not significant alone, their south Oklahoma City location is currently in negotiation for acquiring a nearly 15,000-squarefoot clinic. And that’s after upgrading to 7,000-square-feet just five years prior.
KayeLani Irvin, Therapitas Clinical Director at Walker and a bilingual speechlanguage pathologist, works with a patient.*
*Patients’ names withheld for privacy.
PHOTOS PROVIDED
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