Inclusion, social networks and resilience: strategies, practices and outcomes for disabled children and their families

This paper explores the strategies of service providers and the benefits reported by disabled children and their parents/carers in three Children's Fund programmes in England. Based on National Evaluation of the Children's Fund research, we discuss how different understandings of ‘inclusion’ informed the diverse strategies and approaches service providers adopted. While disabled children and families perceived the benefits of services predominantly in terms of building individual children's resilience and social networks, the paper highlights the need for holistic approaches which have a broad view of inclusion, support children's networks and tackle disabling barriers within all the spheres of children's lives.

Supporting schools in identifying and safeguarding the needs of disabled children: the challenges for data collection

Conceptualisations of disability that emphasise the contextual and cultural nature of disability and the embodiment of these within a national system of data collection present a number of challenges especially where this process is devolved to schools. The requirement for measures based on contextual and subjective experiences gives rise to particular difficulties in achieving parity in the way data is analysed and reported. This paper presents an account of the testing of a tool intended for use by schools as they collect data from parents to identify children who meet the criteria of disability established in Disability Discrimination Acts (DDAs). Data were validated through interviews with parents and teachers and observations of children and highlighted the pivotal role of the criterion of impact. The findings are set in the context of schools meeting their legal duties to identify disabled children and their support needs in a way that captures the complexity of disabled children’s school lives and provides useful and useable data.

Educational robotics as a learning aid for disabled children

Severe disabled children have little chance of environmental and social exploration and discovery, and due this lack of interaction and independency, it may lead to an idea that they are unable to do anything by themselves. This idea is called learned helplessness and is very negative for the child cognitive development and social development as well. With this entire situation it is very likely that the self-steam and mood of this child. Trying to help these children on this situation, educational robotics can offer and aid, once it can give them a certain degree of independency in exploration of environment. The system developed in this work allows the child to transmit the commands to a robot. Sensors placed on the child's body can obtain information from head movement or muscle pulses to command the robot to carry the tasks. Also, this system can be used with a variety of robots, being necessary just a previous configuration. It is expected that, with the usage of this system, the disabled children have a better cognitive development and social interaction, balancing in a certain way, the negative effects of their disabilities. © 2011 IEEE.

Use of myoelectric signals to command mobile entertainment robot by disabled children: Design and control architecture

Severely disabled children have little chance of environmental and social exploration and discovery. This lack of interaction and independency may lead to an idea that they are unable to do anything by themselves. In an attempt to help children in this situation, educational robotics can offer and aid, once it can provide them a certain degree of independency in the exploration of environment. The system developed in this work allows the child to transmit the commands to a robot through myoelectric and movement sensors. The sensors are placed on the child's body so they can obtain information from the body inclination and muscle contraction, thus allowing commanding, through a wireless communication, the mobile entertainment robot to carry out tasks such as play with objects and draw. In this paper, the details of the robot design and control architecture are presented and discussed. With this system, disabled children get a better cognitive development and social interaction, balancing in a certain way, the negative effects of their disabilities. © 2012 IEEE.

Prediction of height from knee height in children with cerebral palsy and non-disabled children

Measurement of height or length is essential in the assessment of nutritional status. In some conditions, for example cerebral palsy (CP), such measurements may be difficult or impossible. Proxy measurements such as knee height have been used to predict height in such cases. We have evaluated two equations in the literature that predict stature from knee height in a group of 17 children with CP and 20 non-disabled children. The two equations performed well on average in the non-disabled children, with the mean predicted height being within 1% of the mean measured height. Nevertheless, the limits of agreement were relatively large. This was also the case for the children with CP. Thus the equations may be accurate at the group level; however they may lead to unacceptable error at the individual level. © 2006 Informa UK Ltd.

Care-less spaces and identity construction:transition to secondary school for disabled children

There is a growing body of literature which marks out a feminist ethics of care and it is within this framework we understand transitions from primary to secondary school education can be challenging and care-less, especially for disabled children. By exploring the narratives of parents and professionals, we investigate transitions and self-identity, as a meaningful transition depends on the care-full spaces pupils inhabit. These education narratives are all in the context of privileging academic attainment and a culture of testing and examinations. Parents and professionals, as well as children are also surveyed. Until there are care-full education processes, marginalisation will remain, impacting on disabled children’s transition to secondary school and healthy identity construction. Moreover, if educational challenges are not addressed, their life chances are increasingly limited. Interdependent caring work enables engagement in a meaningful education and positive identity formation. In school and at home, care-full spaces are key in this process.

Factors associated with breastfeeding in disabled and phenotipically normal children

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Social adaptation of children with mild intellectual disability: Effects of partial integration within primary school classes

is study examined the social adaptation of children with mild intellectual disability who were either (a) partially integrated into regular primary school classes, or (b) full-time in separate classes, All of the children were integrated in sport and play activities with the whole school. Consistent with previous research, children with intellectual disability were less socially accepted than were a matched group of control children. Children in partially integrated classes received more play nominations than those in separate classes, brit there was no greater acceptance as a best friend. On teachers' reports, disabled children had higher levels of inappropriate social behaviours, but there was no significant difference in appropriate behaviours. Self-assessments by integrated children were more negative than those by children in separate classes, and their peer-relationship satisfaction was lower. Ratings by disabled children of their satisfaction with peer relationships were associated with ratings of appropriate social skills by themselves and their teachers, and with self-ratings of negative behaviour. The study confirmed that partial integration can have negative consequences for children with an intellectual disability.

Mothers of children with cerebral palsy with or without epilepsy: a quality of life perspective

Methods. aEuro integral Thirty mothers of disabled children participated in the study. The control group comprised of 18 healthy mothers of children without disabilities. All mothers agreed to participate in the study. They completed the evaluation forms of the SF-36 health survey, a well-documented, self-administered QOL scoring system. Results. aEuro integral The results of our study support the premise that mothers of children with CP, as a group, have poorer QOL than mothers of not disabled children. Conclusions. aEuro integral We also observed that mothers of children with CP and epilepsy have poorer QOL than mothers of children with CP without epilepsy.

Sleep disorders in children with cerebral palsy.

To determine the frequency and predictors of sleep disorders in children with cerebral palsy (CP) we analyzed the responses of 173 parents who had completed the Sleep Disturbance Scale for Children. The study population included 100 males (57.8%) and 73 females (42.2%; mean age 8y 10mo [SD 1y 11mo]; range 6y-11y 11mo). Eighty-three children (48.0%) had spastic diplegia, 59 (34.1%) congenital hemiplegia, 18 (10.4%) spastic quadriplegia, and 13 (7.5%) dystonic/dyskinetic CP. Seventy-three children (42.2%) were in Gross Motor Function Classification System Level I, 33 (19.1%) in Level II, 30 (17.3%) in Level III, 23 (13.3%) in Level IV, and 14 (8.1%) in Level V. Thirty children (17.3%) had epilepsy. A total sleep problem score and six factors indicative of the most common areas of sleep disorder in childhood were obtained. Of the children in our study, 23% had a pathological total sleep score, in comparison with 5% of children in the general population. Difficulty in initiating and maintaining sleep, sleep-wake transition, and sleep breathing disorders were the most frequently identified problems. Active epilepsy was associated with the presence of a sleep disorder (odds ratio [OR]=17.1, 95% confidence interval [CI] 2.5-115.3), as was being the child of a single-parent family (OR=3.9, 95% CI 1.3-11.6). Disorders of initiation and maintenance of sleep were more frequent in children with spastic quadriplegia (OR=12.9, 95% CI 1.9-88.0), those with dyskinetic CP (OR=20.6, 95% CI 3.1-135.0), and those with severe visual impairment (OR=12.5, 95% CI 2.5-63.1). Both medical and environmental factors seem to contribute to the increased frequency of chronic sleep disorders in children with CP.

Undernutrition in children with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities (PIMD): its prevalence and influence on quality of life.

BACKGROUND: To estimate the prevalence of undernutrition among children with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities (PIMD) and to explore its influence on quality of life. METHODS: Seventy-two children with PIMD (47 male; 25 female; age range 2 to 15 years 4 months; mean age 8.6, SD 3.6) underwent an anthropometric assessment, including body weight, triceps skinfold thickness, segmental measures and recumbent length. Undernutrition was determined using tricipital skinfold percentile and z-scores of weight-for-height and height-for-age. The quality of life of each child was evaluated using the QUALIN questionnaire adapted for profoundly disabled children. RESULTS: Twenty-five children (34.7%) were undernourished and seven (9.7%) were obese. Among undernourished children only eight (32 %) were receiving food supplements and two (8%) had a gastrostomy, of which one was still on a refeeding programme. On multivariate analysis, undernutrition was one of the independent predictors of lower quality of life. CONCLUSION: Undernutrition remains a matter of concern in children with PIMD. There is a need to better train professionals in systematically assessing the nutritional status of profoundly disabled children in order to start nutritional management when necessary.

Nouvelles thérapies pour les maladies osseuses de l'enfant [New therapies for children affected by bone diseases].

Considerable progress has been achieved in recent years in treating children affected by bone diseases. Advances in the understanding of the molecular pathophysiology of genetic bone diseases have led to the development of enzyme replacement therapies for various lysosomal storage diseases, following the breakthrough initiated in treating Gaucher disease. Clinical studies are underway with tailored molecules correcting bone fragility and alleviating chronic bone pain and other manifestations of hypophosphatasia, or promoting growth of long bones in achondroplasia patients. We further report our very encouraging experience with intravenous bisphosphonate treatment in children suffering from secondary osteopenia and the high prevalence of calcium and vitamin D deficits in these severely disabled children.

Family Support Subsidy and Children at Home Program SFY 2015, October 30, 2015

The Family Support Subsidy (FSS) program provides a monthly payment to help families with the cost of raising a child with a developmental disability. Parents of children with disabilities were very active in getting state and federal policy makers to look at how they could divert some of the funds going to institutional care. Families with severely disabled children wanted to raise their children at home but were met with a lot of resistance and policy barriers when they tried to get home-based support.

Implicit and explicit functions in the acquisition of a phonics rule in the word recognition of learning disabled and non learning disabled students /

One group of 12 non learning disabled students and two groups of 12 learning disabled students between the ges of 10 and 12 were measured on implicit and explicit knowledge cquisition. Students in each group implicitly cquired knowledge bout I of 2 vocabulary rules. The vocabulary rules governed the pronunciation of 2 types of pseudowords. After completing the implicit acquisition phase, all groups were administered a test of implicit knowledge. The non learning disabled group and I learning disabled group were then asked to verbalize the knowledge acquired during the initial phase. This was a test of explicit knowledge. All 3 groups were then given a postlest of implicit knowledge. This tcst was a measure of the effectiveness of the employment of the verbalization technique. Results indicate that implicit knowledge capabilities for both the learning disabled and non learning disabled groups were intact. However. there were significant differences between groups on explicit knowledge capabilities. This led to the conclusion that implicit functions show little individual differences, and that explicit functions are affected by ability difference. Furthermore, the employment of the verbalization technique significantly increased POStlest scores for learning disabled students. This suggested that the use of metacognitive techniques was a beneficial learning tool for learning disabled students.