The purpose of rehabilitation is to restore some or all of the patient’s physical, sensory, feeding, communication, and cognitive capabilities that were lost due to injury, illness, or disease. Rehabilitation includes assisting the patient to compensate for deficits that cannot be reversed medically and utilizing the existing capacities of the affected person.

Rehabilitation professionals also work on habilitation that is to help a child with achieving developmental skills when impairments have caused delaying or blocking of initial acquisition of the skills. Habilitation can include cognitive, social, fine motor, gross motor, or other skills that contribute to mobility, communication, and performance of activities of daily living and enhance the quality of life.

Each rehabilitation program is tailored to the individual patient’s needs and can include one or more types of therapy. Family members are often actively involved in the patient’s rehabilitation program.