I worked as an occupational therapist inside the traditional systems: school-based, outpatient, early intervention. For a lot of kids, those settings work beautifully, and I'm grateful for them. But I kept meeting children they weren't built for, and watching those children fall through the cracks. I'd have a frightened or high-needs child in front of me, a parent or teacher doing everything they could and still struggling, and a schedule that gave me no room to actually help either of them the way they needed. I built Empower Kids OT because I couldn't keep practicing that way — and because those kids deserved someone who could.
The children I saw slipping through were so often neurodivergent. And patterns kept cropping up:
- They held it together all day at school, then came apart the moment they got home — so the people deciding what help they qualified for only ever saw the version that was coping in public.
- Their fine motor skills tested well, so school OT had to discharge them under state and federal law — but nothing was put in place for the non-academic struggles the child was still living with.
- Children without an official diagnosis — whether from long waitlists or a parent's choice — couldn't qualify for services at all, despite consistent, impactful functional struggles.
- The clinic that could help was open only during the exact hours the whole family was already at school and work.
- Transitions and unfamiliar rooms were so hard that the clinic or school itself became the thing causing the meltdown.
- The child's needs were complex enough that they needed real depth or specialization.
So I built Empower Kids OT.
