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The Oakwood Healthcare System’s Center for Exceptional Families provides comprehensive, coordinated, culturally competent healthcare for children with multiple disabilities throughout Southeast Michigan.  It is unique in the region for the scope and quality of care it offers.  By housing specialized staff and a multidisciplinary team at one site, young patients have all their needs addressed in a single visit rather than in multiple visits to different specialists throughout the Metropolitan Detroit area.  The program has served over 1,000 children through office medical consultation and multidisciplinary team consultations.

The Center for Exceptional Families (CEF) cares for children with major developmental disabilities or chronic complex disorders.  These conditions include diagnoses such as cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy and autism as well as congenital/developmental disabilities, chronic illnesses, acquired disabilities and orthopedic conditions.  In addition to regular, complex consultative medical visits, children at the CEF also benefit from the care delivered from its multi-disciplinary team consisting of a physician, psychologist, social worker, physical therapist, speech and language pathologist, occupational therapist, dietician, nurse and orthotist.

The Center for Exceptional Families also seeks opportunities for social activity and peer interaction among its patients.  Since many children with disabilities experience social isolation from peers and limited social activities, the CEF offers opportunities such as “Wheelchair Basketball”, Family Funday at the park, “Sibshops” for siblings of children with disabilities, and “Teenage Girls’ Night Out”.

The collaboration between Oakwood Healthcare, Inc. - its Center for Exceptional Families - and the University of Michigan-Dearborn - its School of Education and Early Childhood Education Center - seeks to become a nationally recognized model of service and education.

Each partner brings to the effort its special expertise, passion and commitment:

• University of Michigan - To develop children, families and teachers to the fullest, with special attention to young children and those with special needs.
  
  
• Oakwood - To maximize the health and empowerment of children with disabilities and their families.

Combining these talents, resources and purposes - leavened with the shared joy of helping children thrive - the collaboration generates more and better impact than either partner can produce individually.  This impact is realized most fully in these ways:

• For children with disabilities and their families in the region, the partnership facilitates an increasingly integrated and effective suite of services - clinical, educational, social, rehabilitation, emotional.  Through this approach, the partners help young people shape their maximum levels of health and self-determination.  At the same time, this approach creates new models of best practice that can be shared on a national and international basis.
  
  
• The partnership prepares a new generation of teachers who excel in helping children with and without disabilities thrive.  It creates and takes great pride in an environment of inclusion.  From the building entrance to the classroom to the playground, clinicians, faculty, staff and University students learn about and model inclusion, helping children of diverse talents and varying ability learn to be perceptive, accepting, appreciative and successful together.
  
  
• Through collaborative and trans-disciplinary research, the partnership adds significantly to the knowledge and evidence base in relevant fields, disseminates its work and brings important new perspectives to the intersection of education and health care.
  
  
• Innovative, high-impact programs for children, families and community members arise from the clinical, educational and research activities of the partnership.  These programs, created to meet the needs of our region, also set new standards and benchmarks at the national level.