Joey Wahler (Host): It's one very special mother's inspiring story. So we're discussing the physical therapy offered at Wolfson's Children's, at Southeast Georgia Health System. Our guests, Kelly Hidalgo, she's a Pediatric Physical Therapist and also Team Lead for the Pediatric Rehabilitation Department at Wolfson Children's, at Southeast Georgia Health System and Winnie Lockett is with us, the parent of pediatric patients under Kelly's Care. 

This is Health Matters, the podcast from Southeast Georgia Health System that brings you insights from our community's health and wellness experts. Thanks so much for joining us. I'm Joey Wahler. Ladies welcome. Great to have you board.

Winifred “Winnie” Lockett: Thank you.

Kelly Hidalgo, PT, MPT, PCS: Oh thank you.

Host: Absolutely. So first, let's start with you, Kelly. What inspired you more so than anything else to work with children as a physical therapist in the first place?

Kelly Hidalgo, PT, MPT, PCS: So, going through physical therapy school, I always knew I wanted to work with children. The thing that inspired me the most to work with children is I was able to participate in a senior service class as a senior in high school, and it was specifically at a school with medically fragile kids with a lot of physical challenges. And it was just such a special experience and very satisfying and just wonderful children that it guided the trajectory for me for what I wanted to do for physical therapy.

Host: That's great. And so how long have you been with Wolfson's Children's and what's your area of expertise exactly?

Kelly Hidalgo, PT, MPT, PCS: So I have been with Wolfson's for 11 years now. I started in 2014. I work specifically in gross motor skills, which are big movements. So as an infant, that looks like rolling and crawling and then learning to walk. I work with a very special team of therapists that includes occupational therapy and speech therapy as well.

We see all patient populations from birth to technically age 21 with many different diagnoses. Neurodevelopmental diagnoses, cerebral palsy, autism, Down syndrome, some orthopedic injuries and anything across the board that interferes with a child's development.

Host: Gotcha. And how long have you been in the area?

Kelly Hidalgo, PT, MPT, PCS: I started right when we moved here. So I moved from Atlanta in 2014, and I came from Atlanta doing similar work to what I'm doing now.

Host: Okay. Winnie, you're a dedicated foster and adoptive mother from Glynn County who's cared for children with various therapeutic needs, from what I understand since 2014. So first, how many kids are we talking about exactly? And why is caring for them in this way such a passion for you?

Winifred “Winnie” Lockett: Right now we're at a total of 25 kids that's been in and out of our home since 2014. And I just love children. I love to see their growth, and so that's why we became foster adoptive parents.

Host: That's amazing. 25.

Winifred “Winnie” Lockett: Yes.

Host: How would you describe in a nutshell, what's that been like for you?

Winifred “Winnie” Lockett: It's been very challenging at times, just trying to get all the care that they need. But with the help of all the community work and the communities, the people that backs us up and everything, especially people like Kelly and the ladies at Wolfson's Pediatric Therapy, it makes your transition goes a lot better.

Host: So parenting aside for a moment, what else do you enjoy in life?

Winifred “Winnie” Lockett: For me, it's all about my children. So it's not like I can say I can take a vacation when I want to because I don't my chi, my life revolves around my kids. So that's about it. I do like a quiet day just to sit home, when that will happen, we don't know, but that's about it.

Host: Okay. Fair enough. And how long have you been in the area?

Winifred “Winnie” Lockett: We actually have been in this area since 2006.

Host: So Winnie, what were your children's conditions that brought you to Wolfson Children's?

Winifred “Winnie” Lockett: We've had children come from all different walks of life, whether it be neonatal abstinence syndrome, poly substance of drug abuse during birth, trauma after birth. We've, I mean, we've had it all. Neurological issues, developmental delays in growth and stuff, so we've had all of them. So all our special medical fragile kids is, have always been forwarded to Wolfson's Childrens for their services to be, try to get them somewhat ready for life.

Host: That's great to hear. So before your children started therapy initially, what were the biggest concerns or challenges that you had?

Winifred “Winnie” Lockett: My biggest concern is whether or not that child can be successful. That's the first thing we look at. What is the long term of this child? You know, are we going to be able to help him? What is the biggest is the outcome? The challenge is not trying to get the child into services. The challenge is, is always getting the insurance companies to approve the services and try to approve the services quicker than four weeks, six weeks out. So that child is just sitting without the services all this time to get in, to get started.

Host: How would you say therapy has addressed some of the issues your children have had? And talk a little about the progress that's resulted.

Winifred “Winnie” Lockett: Therapy has been a Godsend I've had children that come to us that are, I say spine twisted. I've had some that we didn't think they would ever make any type of emotional signs of smiling or any type of gestures, but with their therapy from his, from physical therapy to occupational therapy later on down the line to speech therapy.

Matter of fact, our current adopted kids that we have now are still in services, and we see the growth. We see the progress that they're making. Sometimes, we look at it and say, oh, wow. When you start, you're thinking it's not really working, but as time go by and you continue to do it, and then they teach us those things at home that we do at home, as well as in the facility, it works out great.

Host: And so speaking of which, any specific milestones or achievements that therapy has helped any of your kids reach? For instance, you mentioned smiling. It makes me think, I would imagine parents of healthy, quote unquote normal kids probably take a young kid smiling for granted. But when it takes more of an effort, you appreciate it a lot more, I'm sure. Right?

Winifred “Winnie” Lockett: Yes, yes you do. When you can see that child come to you and whether it's been trauma through birth or trauma after birth, and then that child go through all these therapies and the love that you give them here in the home; that one smile, whether it be a quick second or a long-term smile, makes a big change.

And not only just their smile, just their ability to say, like Kelly said, earlier, to roll over or even to try to crawl, or I call it the battleground crawl. You know, it's those little things, those little small milestones that we take for granted with healthy kids that these kids may not get it. I fight daily. I advocate for these children. I fight for everything that they're entitled to. I ask and I'm, I always try to get everything they need because I look at it, if they wasn't with me, who would fight for them? They came to me. And when we took into foster care, they say to treat these children as though they're your children. And so that's what I do. I treat them as though they're all my children.

Host: And it certainly sounds as though they're very lucky to have you to say the least. We'll talk more with you in a moment, but first, Kelly, what would you say your approach is in a nutshell to treating children's physical challenges? And then how do you tailor that for each one's specific needs, would you say?

Kelly Hidalgo, PT, MPT, PCS: So whenever I meet a family for the first time, my number one goal is to build trust with them. And listen, because I get the privilege of having this family with me for a long period of time, a lot of times. Both in a session, I can sit with them for an hour and a half the first time I see them, and then longevity.

So, you know the children I've seen with Winnie, we see for several months or sometimes a year or years. And so I get the opportunity to build a relationship. And I think that's the foundation for educating the family, building a relationship with a child, even an infant. Those are important, important children to build relationships with. And it can be done. I'm challenging them often to do things they're not doing on their own. And so they need to trust me. So, that's important to me. I always look for a child's strength and build on that, and it could be very small. We already talked about the smile, but the small things are big deals that build on each other.

You know, of course everyone's goal is they want their child to walk and talk, and we're always moving in that direction, but it all looks very different. So sometimes walking turns into being able to use your own wheelchair, just being mobile. Sometimes talking looks like it's talking on a device. And not verbal. So we're building on those strengths. Challenging the kids so that they grow and educating the families and making them feel supported and guiding them through the process often. Often we're social workers too, and not just therapists. So it takes a lot of good relationship and trust and communication.

Host: I'm sure it does. And so once that foundation that you just talked about is laid, so to speak, how do you then go about setting goals and assessing a particular child's developmental progress along the way?

Kelly Hidalgo, PT, MPT, PCS: Right. So we do use standardized developmental tests and there's a variety of those we can use depending on their age and what we're looking for. I try to impart upon parents, I can get an age equivalent, but I'm more looking for what are you doing now that we can build on, that later when I go to retest them, we've shown a little bit of progress, and even if we don't show progress on that test, because tests are tests, what are we doing now that we weren't doing before, more so than comparing them to another child.

That's not what I'm really doing. I want the family to see the progress the child's making, even if it's small. And so I will use what a child's already doing and I'll look to what they should be doing next. And I'll set interval goals towards that. So if they're not rolling and I want them to roll, my first goal might be rolling onto their side or just tolerating being put on their side.

It's very tailored to what the child is presenting to me right now and what a child's comfortable with. There's a lot of areas. I have to consider the whole child, how they respond emotionally, what they can tolerate, whether it's touch or light or sound and what are they doing in other therapies often.

So those are all the tools that I use to help decide goals and where we're going towards.

Host: Speaking of that bigger picture if you will, you mentioned you're part of a great team, of course. How do you collaborate with those other professionals, occupational therapists, speech therapists, educators, to kind of pull it all together?

Kelly Hidalgo, PT, MPT, PCS: Yeah, so we're lucky enough to all be located in the same office, and so that affords us the opportunity, at least the therapists are. Now, if we're talking to a teacher, we have ways to reach out. And we have connections with the schools. But for our team, we're so close together and spend a lot of time together that it affords us the opportunity to have team discussions about patients and ask for advice and find out what they're doing in that area at the moment and incorporate it into my session. The other thing that we can do is co-treat together. So we might have a session where the speech therapist is in with me and they're either consulting or they're working with me.

And then we're able to, I can position a child while a speech therapist or an occupational therapist is playing or working on language. So we'll collaborate in that way as well.

Host: Then what role do parents play in their child's therapy journey in order to support progress at home? I would imagine it's a big help to say the least when you have a parent as devoted as Winnie here, right?

Kelly Hidalgo, PT, MPT, PCS: Yes, Winnie makes things so easy. So every parent, just like every child, is going to be different. And part of our job is to assess where that parent is or caregiver, it's not always a parent is in their journey as well. And I don't want a parent to feel like a therapist. So I'm always trying to give them things at home that are easier for them to do, but will promote the goals that we're looking for.

And sometimes I just tell a parent I want them to be a parent and love on their kid and not worry about the next step. And then I have some parents who want, I need you to give me an exact prescription about what I'm supposed to do. And so those parents, they practice rolling with their kid two times a day for 20 minutes.

But more than, more times than not, we're educating parents on how to play and interact with their child in a way that supports their development.

Host: You led me beautifully there, Kelly, into my next question for Winnie, because you mentioned support. Winnie, how has the therapy team indeed supported your children, family throughout this process?

Winifred “Winnie” Lockett: Support is, over beyond. I can't even say how much they have supported us. I can make a phone call or I could just stop by the office and say, Hey, I got concerns about this and that. Their support is wonderful at Wolfson's Children's Services. From the physical therapist standpoint to the occupational, occupational also helps some of my children with feeding therapy is tied in together. We have kids with swallowing dysfunctions that can't eat certain foods. You think a 2-year-old could eat french fries and chicken nuggets. They have a hard time with that. So, you know, it's all tied in together. So we introduce different things together.

And so the support system at Wolfson's Childrens is like exceptional.

Host: I mean, having a milestone of being able to eat french fries and chicken nuggets, that sounds as important as anything if you ask me. Right, And on a serious note, kids definitely love that stuff starting from age two, if not earlier. Right. What improvements, Winnie, have you noticed in your children's daily lives, in school and their social interactions? What are some of the things that show you that real progress is happening?

Winifred “Winnie” Lockett: I've had children start to walk that couldn't walk. I've had children that now can speak, that at the age of two, couldn't even really babble. So now they're three years old and they're speaking, they're learning new techniques, they're learning how to use their fingers, just pinching little things and sensory issues that a lot of the kids have. Children walk on their tiptoes, you would think, oh, that's no problem. But it is a issue with the child that they walk on their tiptoes. So it's a lot of sensory, has to be a certain type of shoe. Kelly has helped us out a lot with that, whether it be a insert, whether it's a certain type of shoe they need to wear to help them control that balance to get off their toes. I've had so much great progress out of therapy with my children.

Even their, Wolfson's doesn't offer like ABA therapy. It's like a play therapy. But I still feel like Wolfson's still does play therapy with our children to allow them to, when they start school, say kindergarten or pre-K, kindergarten, first grade, those kids are able to sit in a classroom with other children and be able to adapt to their daily lives in a classroom versus as at home or with mom.

Host: A couple of other things here for each of you, Winnie, what particular therapists or therapy sessions made a significant impact? Obviously we have Kelly here, but as we've talked about, she's part of a great team, right?

Winifred “Winnie” Lockett: Yes. I cannot say I have a particular therapist. That whole group is wonderful. I can't pick just one. I really can't. I'm going to have to say the entire group is a wonderful group of people. I have to back Kelly up and say, yes, they do. You may come in for a physical therapy evaluation and next thing you know, you have the occupational therapist in.

You got the speech therapist in, and they're looking at this one child to see how can they help this child. That is what I love about them. They don't, just because you don't see them at that time for that services; they come in, they group together, they collaborate together to see, okay, we can help this child this way.

Even though I may come in there just thinking, oh, he just need to learn how to roll or crawl or sit on his own without assistance. They're looking at everything. What is the sensory of occupational wise, if this child is at the talking age away, or were it needs to be babbling or talking, the speech therapist come in and say, Hey, let's look and see what happens while you're doing this.

So that's what I love about Wolfson's Children's Services.

Host: Great to hear. What advice Winnie would you give to parents whose child has just started physical therapy and maybe they're feeling a little bit anxious about the whole thing?

Winifred “Winnie” Lockett: What I could tell them is that to please be patient. It's not going to happen overnight. You're not going to see the improvement in 30 days. Sometimes it may take six months so you can actually see what is going on. But if you just be patient and work with them, they will work the best they can. It takes some time.

It didn't have, it's kind of like when you tell people, you know, you want to lose weight, we didn't gain it overnight. You're not going to lose it overnight. So that's what I tell parents. Even today when you put your child in a therapy session, be involved. Don't just sit you know there and be like, oh, I'm not worried about it.

They just go in there, do it. Be involved with that child's session so that way you could see what's going on and you could do those things at home and a lot of times you end up doing them not even thinking that you're doing them.

Host: Kelly, in summary here, how about a particularly memorable success story or breakthrough moment you've had, whether it be with one of Winnie's many children or another young patient of yours? 

Kelly Hidalgo, PT, MPT, PCS: I was prepared for this question and there are, so I probably have a moment daily. I mean, if I'm going to be honest. I can think of two right off the top of my head, one involving one of Winnie's special kids that she had briefly. And he was a very, very involved child. And he, you know, it was one of those things where you're, you kind of sit and go, we probably just need to make him really comfortable, you know, get everybody comfortable with handling him and him comfortable being in this world. And we got a chair for him right away, a special stroller. And I remember putting him in it the first time and he just calmed down. You remember this Winnie?

And he sat there. And he was so content and relaxed. It was a huge goal met. And then I've had kids, you know, a child with cerebral palsy who's a little older, he can't walk by himself. But we found the right bracing for him. And I will remember the first time that he took some steps with the walker and those braces. It wasn't very far. But to me it made him a walker. And just the pure joy on his face was enough to bring tears to your eyes, quite honestly. So those are the two.

Host: I'm sure, and that really goes to Winnie's point earlier that what to some people might seem like little milestones can be very large indeed. Finally, for you, Winnie, how much better do you feel about the overall future of all your children that have gone through this care because of what they've been able to be exposed to?

Winifred “Winnie” Lockett: I feel like my children's future is bright. We go through this and I'm going speak on my adoptive children that I have, that are patients at Wolfson's, and I just feel like they have accomplished a lot. Coming from neonatal abstinence syndrome to now we have diagnosis of autism and ADHD and we have, you know, developmental delays.

We have all type of neurological issues. They are such a bundle of joy to be working with and to see the growth even today, it's like, wow. One, I could see a doctor, I could see an attorney. I could see a business owner. I could see this in their future. I could see these children being able to go to a classroom, which they do on a daily basis now, that at first we was like, mm-hmm.

They're not going to make it in a classroom with nobody. I need to find homeschool. But now they're in a classroom, they're going to school. They're being able to go and transition from PE to science or from chapel to English. You know, they're enjoying this thing and they're learning that because Wolfson's they allow them to come in and learn the occupational and learn to use their time wisely and try to slow down with the anxiety, with the autism and stuff.

So I'm very appreciative. So yes, hats off to these ladies.

Host: Very well said indeed. Well, folks, we trust you are now more familiar with the physical therapy available at Wolfson's Children's at Southeast Georgia Health System. Kelly, we hope that you and yours keep up all your great work. Thanks again.

Kelly Hidalgo, PT, MPT, PCS: Thank you.

Host: Absolutely. And Winnie, we wish the continued very best for you and your children and the only other thing I can add, I think where you're concerned is really we should all have a parent like you.

Winifred “Winnie” Lockett: Oh, well thank you. Thank you very much.

Host: Absolutely. And for more information, please do visit sghs.org/pedrehab. If you found this podcast helpful, please do share it on your social media. I am Joey Wahler, and thanks so much again for being part of Health Matters, the podcast from Southeast Georgia Health System.