Foot health for children at Hunt Footcare
Children’s feet may be fully formed when they are born, but they take time to develop. So, kids naturally have flat feet until the age of 5 or 6, when the foot arches develop fully. It’s important from the time they start walking to have properly fitted shoes that don’t pinch and allow for growth. For most children, along with good hygiene and clean socks, expert fitted shoes will keep their feet healthy and in good shape for future life.
Children’s foot pain and foot problems
If children complain of foot pain at any time, this is something no parent should ignore. Children’s feet are as vulnerable to injury as adults, and complaints about sore heels, toes, pain in the bottom of the feet, legs and knees may be indicators of underlying walking or gait issues, or possible bone disease or deformity. Foot pain in children can also be a sign of osteoarthritis or juvenile rheumatoid arthritis.
At Hunt Footcare, we understand children’s feet, and we take time to discover exactly what may be causing your child’s foot pain. Our team at Hunt Footcare can often treat children’s foot pain with a combination of exercises and measures such as custom orthotics, rather than major intervention or surgery. We may occasionally prescribe strengthening therapy and joint mobilization programs and if required, an anti inflammatory prescription.
Foot infections in Children
Equally, kids get their feet as wet, muddy, cold, hot or just plain grubby as their parents, so they can also suffer from skin problems such as athlete’s foot, fungal nail infections, ingrown nail infections, bacterial infections that cause smelly feet, viral infections, and verrucas. Of course, we’ve seen these all before, and our expert children’s foot care team can help with suitable treatments and suggestions for keeping those changing-room infections at bay in the future!
We also offer a shoe sterilization service that ‘cleans’ shoes of residual fungus and bacteria, leaving them nice and fresh and preventing reinfection.
For diabetic children, we offer a special diabetes foot care service.
Pre and post surgical braces and rehabilitation for children
At Hunt Footcare, we work with the best Ontario paediatric orthopaedic surgeons to manage post surgical rehabilitation in cases such as club foot by providing splints, braces, orthotics, stretching and strengthening programs specially tailored to your child’s condition. Call us for more details.