Jessi Frencken and Carmen Rathert are the co-owners of The Pediatric Place, an interdisciplinary therapy clinic in Clinton and Knob Noster that offer services, such as occupational therapy, speech therapy, physical therapy, ABA [applied behavior analysis] therapy and more.
They spoke about the importance of having services in their largely rural area and about how they're helping help kids and empowering families.
For the month of September, we're focusing on the health of those living in west and west central Missouri.
Jessi Frencken: Our goal has always been, in this rural area, to ensure that kids are getting services that they can without having to drive really far distances.
We live in this area – we want families in this area to not have to drive to Kansas City, not have to drive to Columbia to get services when they need services two and three times a week.
Carmen Rathert: And we don't want, you know, each of us had worked in places where we were the only one.
Jessi Frencken: Mhmm.
Carmen Rathert: I was the only speech therapist, and there were no OTs or PTs, and so, I was watching families asking like, “Do you know of a physical therapist?”
And so, we've always been very collaborative in care – meaning I don't want to have to know anything about OT except how to recognize if a kid needs OT, but I want to have an OT that I can say, “Hey, they're the expert in this. Go talk to the OT.”
And then I will support you, from a speech perspective, doing anything the OT needs me to do to help you. And so, that has been wonderful to have that collaboration.
Jessi Frencken: Yeah.
Carmen Rathert: So, one of our missions is also to relieve stress in the family unit. That feeling of, “I didn't do something right. It's my fault. I can't do what you guys are doing,” you know, all of those things.
And so, we train our staff –
Jessi Frencken: Mhmm.
Carmen Rathert: – to get them through on a gradient scale. We want them taking one step at a time. So, I'm not going to give a parent homework to do 10 different things. I'm going to say, what can you do in your day, you know?
In a speech example, it's like, you know, “How many times a day do you lift your kiddo up into their highchair?”
“Oh, gosh, well, at least six times a day,” and I'm like, “Okay, so let's just focus on that. Every time you're the kiddo wants up to get in the chair, we're going to point our finger and go, ‘Up.’”
Because we're – Jesse's a mom, I'm a mom – I know what life is like at home, when you're trying to cook dinner and kids are crying and screaming and it's challenging, so we want it to be as easy but as impactful as we can.
Jessi Frencken: My love has always been in early intervention, and part of that is because I love empowering parents that they really can do it all. They are their kids, best teachers, you know?
Carmen Rathert: And we wanted our staff to also understand that every parent, every family, comes in with a story before they even get to us.
Jessi Frencken: Yeah.
Carmen Rathert: You know, a lot of times, if a family has a bad experience, they're coming into us with some very heavy feelings about therapy, and so, just giving parents the opportunity to, if they want, to tell us their story without any judgment, and then meet them where they are.
