The direction of Sarah McNeill’s life emerged like a blueprint early on.
“When I was growing up, we didn’t have technology like cellphones. I played in the woods behind our house in Middletown,” she said. “Then in middle and high school, I was a competitive national gymnast. The bars and the beams, the intensity, hard work and camaraderie; I loved it.”
McNeill said her life back then was all about school and gymnastics.
“The person I am now is because of gym,” she said. “The grit, working out four hours a day; it really helped me.”
Today, she’s the founder of McNeill Children’s Institute, a medical clinic in Middletown, with locations also in North Kingstown and East Providence, that treats young people up to age 22 with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, dyslexia, autism and other conditions. The focus is on empowering children with disabilities to reach their full potential. Families are included in sessions using speech and pediatric occupational therapy, as well as feeding and vision therapies, and diverse learning programs. Therapists also work on social skills.
“This area is difficult because these kids usually have higher intelligence,” McNeill said. “They have issues but can’t get help through school because they don’t have cognitive delays.”
After high school, McNeill chose Quinnipiac University in Connecticut to study occupational therapy. She’d been getting in trouble as a teenager and didn’t want to go to college, but Quinnipiac, a smaller school, had a rigorous program with a lot of support. She also had very good parents who kept her in line, she says. They encouraged her to go on to university and kept her on the straight and narrow.
Occupational therapy was a good fit and promised to be an interesting career, but college wasn’t easy.
“I don’t really read and comprehend what I’m reading. I have to write everything out. It doesn’t make for an easy situation. That’s how I got my degree,” she said. “Eventually, I learned I have ADHD, and some auditory processing difficulties, like some kids I treat, but I wasn’t diagnosed till I was 44. I’ve always felt different.”
McNeill wanted a job where she could move around physically and after graduation, she went to California. She studied with pioneers in pediatric occupational therapy and learned techniques that target children’s vestibular, visual and auditory systems. California is very progressive with a lot of opportunities in this area, she says, and she spent 22 years in the San Diego school system as a pediatric occupational therapist.
During that time, she launched a home-visit business.
“I had a need for fulfillment I wasn’t getting at school,” she said.
Then in 2016, she began working with Red Autismo, a nonprofit foundation for children with autism in Baja, Calif. She still returns twice a year to reassess the kids there.
In 2019, she and her husband, Trevor, moved back to Rhode Island with their two kids to be closer to her parents. She took a job as head occupational therapist in the Portsmouth School System in 2019, just before the COVID-19 outbreak.
When the pandemic shut everything down in the spring of 2020, she decided to go out on her own. In July of that year, she debuted McNeill Children’s Institute in a wellness center in Middletown. She used the knowledge and techniques she’d learned in California to help children who couldn’t get medical help or support at school because they fell into the gray area of testing.
Within eight weeks of opening, she says, her weekly schedule was full, with 60 hours of appointments. Insurance was slow to pay, so it was a difficult start, but she managed to hire an assistant, and the state gave her free masks and other protective gear.
“Nothing was open, except us,” McNeill said. “We never closed.”
The clinic has grown in its four years and now numbers 24 staff members and 400 appointments a week, with a waiting list. Therapists offer a range of programs, some run by occupational and physical therapists for young kids who can’t do preschool because they’re not potty trained. There are also speech therapy sessions, cooking classes for picky eaters, as well as programs for teens being bullied in school who need help with their social skills.
“Teachers try their best. When they send these kids to us, it’s been a long time,” McNeill said. “Sometimes parents are waiting for someone to tell them to get help, but when they have an intuition about their child, I tell them go with that.”
Last year, McNeill took the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses program at the Community College of Rhode Island. It was a major boost.
“It gave me the confidence that I can do this,” she said.
When McNeill’s not working, she likes to hang out with her family and her pet shih tzu and do monthly family outings with children in need of socializing, using games of Wiffle ball to help make connections.
“I have a very strong passion for helping people who need support,” McNeill said. “Here at the institute, it’s a happy and positive environment.”
