Suzette Werner Jones was working as an Occupational Therapist at Craig Hospital in Englewood, Colo., in 1975 when Congress passed Public Law 94-142, legislation designed to improve opportunities in education for handicapped children and adults.

The legislation also required that both Occupational and Physical Therapies be provided in public schools for these special-needs children.

After moving to Tulsa with her husband's job, Suzette worked at Children Medical Center before founding TherapyWorks, Inc., in 1981. Today, TherapyWorks provides pediatric physical, occupational and speech therapy in both a clinic setting and through community-based services.

In 1979, states were mandated to begin providing therapy in public schools. Suzette saw a need.

"There was no one doing this," Suzette said. "PL 94-142 was a fairly new law requiring new services in schools and that's how I initially started."

"I saw an opportunity and I felt that there was more that could be done in the community," she said.

When she first opened the doors to her new venture, Suzette said she consulted in schools all over eastern Oklahoma, setting up programs and providing therapy. She soon realized that she needed some help and began hiring other therapists. After five years, Suzette decided that she wanted to have an outpatient clinic in addition to her school consultation.

"What you can do in schools for kids is limited," Suzette said. "There are a lot of things that the children needed - wheelchairs, braces, more therapy - and those items weren't covered by school therapy."

"I felt like I wanted to do the whole picture. They needed more than I could provide and that was frustrating for me," she said.

In the late 1980s Suzette opened both an outpatient pediatric clinic and a hand therapy practice - one of her specialties when she was working at Craig Hospital. Her practice continued to grow and eventually expanded into adult outpatient orthopedic treatment in 1992. As TherapyWorks continued to grow, changes in staff, insurance and increased competition in the area began to take their toll on the company.

"It became clear that we needed to narrow our focus back down to pediatrics," Suzette said. "I phased out the hand therapy and adult orthopedic treatment and concentrated on the schools and the pediatric clinic. And that's what we do today - occupational, physical and speech therapy in approximately 25 school districts in eastern Oklahoma."

Although Suzette and her team do have a more narrow focus, she admits that the changes in health care and a sluggish economy may affect the services her practice provides.

"Just in the last year we've seen the school practice diminish," she said. "It's a reduction in school budgets. We've been told by school administrations that we have to reduce the amount of services we can provide. That's a big concern. We're trying to preserve services for children, but we'll really have to monitor what happens on the health care reform front."

Suzette says she bounces these challenges, as well as her successes and ideas, off of the other women in her EWF International Forum.

"I learn something every single time, even if it's not my turn to present," she said. "I always walk away with one or two, or five or ten, things I want to follow up on."

"I can tell you that when I was at my lowest point, having lost two very large school contracts, not yet having the clinic where it needed to be to be self sustaining with our growth, I was really worried about our survival. And month after month, people were always there to encourage me and make suggestions. It's really made a difference."

Suzette graduated from the University of Kansas with a bachelor's degree in Occupational Therapy, a profession she entered because of her grandfather. Confined to a wheelchair because of polio, Suzette's grandfather was extremely self-sufficient. Her grandparents built a wheelchair accessible home in the 1950s, and her grandfather adapted things so that he could work in his garden and cook in the kitchen. Suzette's grandmother supported the family from the 1930s on, having to fight for a petition to work from Kansas' governor.

"Those are the types of women in my family," she said. "We're determined."

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