- Medical Stability
- Facilitating Safe Swallowing
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Nutrition Management to Improve Oral Nutritional Intake/Nutrition and Hydration
- Estimating Energy and Protein Requirements
- Supporting Adequate Growth
- Supporting Oral Nutrition for Exclusively Breastfed Infants
- Supporting Oral Nutrition for Formula Fed Infants
- Supporting Oral Nutrition for Infants Between 6 - 12 Months
- Supporting Oral Nutrition from 12 Months Onward
- Ensuring Adequate Fluid Intake
- Supporting a Healthy Eating Pattern
- When to Consider Enteral Nutrition
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Seating and Positioning
- Positioning of Infants and Young Children for Feeding
- Positioning for Breast and Bottle Feeding in Infants and Young Children
- Positioning When Introducing Solids
- Using Highchairs and Boosters
- Positioning for Infants, Children and Youth with Significant Postural Needs
- Using Specialized Seating Equipment
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Feeding Skill Development
- Facilitating First Tastes
- Facilitating Infant Feeding as a Neurodevelopmental Skill
- Facilitating Child Feeding as a Neurodevelopmental Skill and a Relational and Responsive Process
- Facilitating Oral Sensorimotor Function
- Considerations for Pacifier/Soother Use
- Considerations for Breastfeeding
- Considerations for Bottle Feeding
- Considerations for Solids
- Additional Resources
- Feeding Environments and Routines
- Sensory Processing/Regulation
- Oral Hygiene and Dental Health
- Surgical Management
Habilitation
Habilitation aims to support infants and children to attain or keep skills. In swallowing, habilitative therapy often functions to support the development of oral sensorimotor skills that have yet be mastered. In some cases, strategies are used for eliciting the skills that emerge in the typical oral sensorimotor skill sequence. For instance, therapeutic strategies for infants, such as oral stimulation with tastes, or time and volume limited oral feeding, may provide beneficial opportunities for purposeful swallowing.
Habilitation may include supporting the development of feeding and swallowing beginning with foundational skills and practicing within the infant or child’s zone of proximal development (Graham, 2022).
Behavioural interventions focus on increasing applicable and relevant actions or behaviours and reducing maladaptive behaviours related to eating and swallowing (American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, 2022).
- PEAS does not endorse any products, procedures, or programs, and therefore does not have an official position on the use of any compensatory, rehabilitative, or habilitative management strategy cited within this Clinical Practice Guide.
- PEAS endorses that health professionals who engage in any compensatory, rehabilitative, or habilitative management strategy ensure that it is within the scope of their professional practice and competence, considering their certification status, education, training, and experience (American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, 2022).
