No, you do not need a doctor's referral to access any of our services. You can contact us directly to get started. However, some extended health insurance plans may require a physician's referral for reimbursement, so we recommend checking your specific plan details.

The first step is to fill out our Service Intake Form. This gives us the necessary information to understand your needs and match you with the best provider on our team. Once we review your form, we will contact you to schedule an initial consultation.

It can be confusing, and we're here to help! Our intake form will guide you, and our clinical team will recommend the most appropriate services based on the information you provide. We often find that a collaborative, multi-disciplinary approach offers the best outcomes for our clients.

The first session is primarily an assessment. For children, this is a play-based session where the therapist builds rapport while gathering key information about their history, strengths, and areas of need. For parents, it's a chance to share your concerns and goals. Together, we'll create a therapy plan that feels right for your family.

Absolutely. We believe that caregiver involvement is the key to success. Your role may vary depending on the service and your child's goals, from direct participation in sessions to receiving coaching and strategies to implement at home. We view our relationship with you as a partnership.

"Indirect time" refers to the essential work your therapist does outside of the direct, face-to-face session. This typically includes 15 minutes of professional documentation, clinical planning, care coordination with other providers, and preparing materials for your next session. This ensures your service is comprehensive, well-documented, and tailored to your child's evolving needs.

We work with all ages and abilities! While we have extensive experience in a variety of musculoskeletal, neurological and developmental conditions, we prefer to focus on what a child can do rather than their specific diagnosis. This outlook allows us to be a fully inclusive team!

We do! Once you are connected with one of our professionals, you can set up a 15 minute meet and greet call to discuss how you would like to see your services and ask any questions you have for the team member. If you feel like the team member is a great fit, you can move ahead with booking your initial session!

Occupational therapists help children do the things they do everyday! This includes playing and going to school as well as day-to-day tasks such as self care (dressing, washing etc), eating and participating in activities with their family. Children struggling with attention, social skills, play, emotions, sensory regulation and following routines can benefit from OT intervention. Our OT’s love to participate in trainings and expand their skills, our team is ready to play and work with kid’s in many different areas!

A speech-language pathologist (SLP) can help you and your child better communicate. SLPs can help diagnose, assess and/or help manage an array of language or communication needs. You may see a speech-language pathologist for many reasons including: if you or others are having difficulties understanding your child’s speech, if they are having difficulties expressing themselves or understanding you, if your child has a stutter or lisp, if they are a late-talker or, if they are having difficulties with social communication (like making conversation or taking turns while playing). An SLP can also help support and develop your child's literacy skills such as spelling, reading and writing.

Speech-language pathologists help children with many different needs including those with hearing impairments, autism, cerebral palsy and other genetic or intellectual disabilities.

A Psychologist is a registered professional who offers behavioural therapy and counselling services. Some of our psychologists also offer assessment services for ADHD, cognitive learning, giftnedness, Autism, etc.

Our Social Workers are referred to as Behaviour Consultant at Ascend. A Social Worker is a registered professional who offers behavioural therapy and counselling services. Both of these professions can help families identify practical strategies to provide behavioural and emotional support for your child. They can also help your child expand their emotional awareness and process difficulties they may be experiencing.

Ascend has both Psychologists and Behaviour Consultants to provide behavioural therapy services. As with any registered professionals, the interventions and therapy modalities used may depend on the clinician’s own experience and approach to their work. Psychologists and Social Workers have different educational backgrounds, but all of our team members are registered Masters level clinicians and can provide these services for both private and FSCD contracts.

If you are pursuing services under an FSCD contract, it is important to know that only one Psychologist or one Behaviour consultant can be added to the contract for behaviour therapy.

This really depends on a number of factors, most notably, the family’s availability throughout the week and the location for services. Due to the fact that the majority of our clients are school aged children, we see a high volume of requests for services after 4:00pm, so families with daytime availability will potentially start services before others who precede them on our waiting list.
In-clinic sessions allow us to schedule multiple consecutive sessions which means providers can do more in the same number of hours in the clinic as they can in community. Likewise, families that reside in areas where we have service providers already providing in-home services are more likely to be matched for in-home requests.