Our Team
Elizabeth Schroeder
Hi, I am an occupational therapist, foster mother, step-mom, and wife. I practice reckless optimism - fulfilling my dreams and helping my friends and family pursue their dreams. I have a passion for serving children and cultivating their growth in a safe and stable environment - especially those who have experienced traumatic events. Every child can be their blooming lotus persevering throughout the mud of early abuse and neglect.
Over the many years I have been serving children, I have focused on sensory integration, parent-child bonding, parent-to-parent mentoring, and feeding difficulties. I have had the privilege of providing treatment in many settings from hospital medical teams, orphanages, foster homes, even to a parents’ drug and alcohol addiction recovery program. Throughout all these settings, I see the breadth of the impact of adverse childhood events on growth and social-emotional development.
For years, I have been living the life of a foster parent - I have navigated the system and in spite of the poor support and parental shaming I have designed a child-centered, trauma-informed, loving, and supportive home life for multiple children.
Through in-home therapy I will be able to use my skills, education, and lived experience to help the foster parent with secondary trauma and the foster child who’ve experienced trauma improve sleep quality, make space for bonding to a caregiver through specialized touch, allow a feeling of safety and security for healthy attachment, and increase volume and variety of foods eaten for optimal nutrition, growth, and development.
Melissa Wirtz
Hi, I am a Speech-Language Pathologist, wife and mom of 2. I believe in making time for what’s most important, and for me, that’s quality time with my family, reading good books, walking my dog and trying new restaurants with friends. I have over 13 years of experience as an SLP, with a majority of my time spent working with young children, with a wide variety of communication needs, in a school setting. I am passionate about disability inclusion and making sure everyone has the opportunity to communicate and be heard.
While inclusion has always been an important piece of my work, it became personal when my son was diagnosed with a developmental delay, including a severe speech disorder. I understand and appreciate how collaboration with teachers and families is essential for success and that working within a child’s natural environments alongside teachers, peers and family members leads to greater carryover of skills. Communication is truly a team effort!
My expertise includes helping children with all aspects of communication; speech sound articulation, receptive and expressive language, social language, fluency and augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) methods.
Brooke Williams
Hi, I am an occupational therapist, wife, and mom of 2! I am also a lover of being outdoors, good times, good people, and trying not to sweat the small stuff. I am passionate about serving children with sensory processing, developmental differences, or those who benefit from support in their day-to-day activities and routines. I believe that each child is unique and deserves individualized care to foster their growth and strengths.
My journey in learning about the positive power of occupational therapy began with my younger brother who has Down Syndrome. He received in-home therapy services and I knew I wanted to pursue a career in therapy from a young age after engaging in sessions with him and his therapist. I have worked with children of all ages and with various diagnoses in various settings including clinics, in-home first steps programs, school-based, private practice, group-based, and virtual school teletherapy.
My approach is to work with children in their daily environment as it provides the opportunity for modeling to caregivers, empowering the skills of co-regulation, and enhanced teaching. I use a holistic framework when assessing and working with a child.
My special interest is working with children at their daycares, preschools, non-traditional school settings, and homes to increase carryover in their daily environment and collaborate with caregivers in those settings. With my past experiences, I have realized the significant benefit of working with these children in their environment to increase skills in play, self-care, social participation, emotional regulation, sensory processing, and learning strategies.
Ayraka Bree Straws
Hi, I am an Occupational Therapist, daughter, sister, partner, and friend. I love celebrating people and encouraging others to love who they are. My passion is to serve diverse communities that are in need and to help individuals celebrate their uniqueness. I firmly believe that everyone has the right not to feel ashamed for their differences and everyone deserves the opportunity to live their life every day to the fullest. As an occupational therapist, my goal is to help individuals maintain, develop, or recover skills that allow them to perform activities important to them and promote access to every part of life.
I believe that from a young age, children who have a condition or disability should not be taught it is a negative or bad thing. I focus on meeting a child where they are and work to provide them with individualistic care that best suits them. In my practice, I believe that both the mind and body need to be taken into consideration when providing services. There are so many parts that make up who a child is and they should never be treated less than. They deserve to be listened to & treated with respect. Not only do I look at the child's diagnosis, condition, and needs, but all parts of the child. The beliefs, culture, trauma, family, roles, and identity of the child will always be taken into account.
I adore learning and even though I have completed my academic career I never want to stop learning. As an entry-level occupational therapist, I am working to continue expanding my mind and skill set. To provide the utmost care, I look at continuing education as a lifelong journey. As I grow as a therapist, I strive to help children engage in all areas of their life from self-care, play, and participating in school activities, to self-regulation and social interactions. I will work to provide them with tools that they can use in all areas of their life and throughout their development.
Join Our Team
Our vision is to be able to build a team of passionate, holistic therapists and healthcare practitioners, each with a specialty, creating a wider vault of knowledge to support families. We will provide a platform for clinicians to feel empowered to provide sustainable pediatric services in their specialities and to have the tools to grow their careers.
Having worked in a range of settings, Elizabeth and Brooke have experienced one common theme across the board: burnout. We believe therapists and clinicians are highly educated, talented, and compassionate. Unfortunately, productivity demands that require therapists to see clients back-to-back all day leads to burnout and less room to provide quality, individualized care.
We want to flip this script. We believe therapists and clinicians should be valued in their time and income. We want to empower therapists to build their dream practice. Seedling Pediatric Therapies would love to build a network of holistic clinicians and resources by providing the business foundation while clinicians get to set their own schedules and delineate their preferred caseload.