Developmental Coordination Disorder: A synthesis of evidence to underpin an allied health professions' framework

In search of wellness: allied health professionals' understandings of wellness in childhood disability services

“…The incorporation of any innovation into clinical practice and best-practice guidelines is a fraught process, marked by numerous facilitating and impeding factors requiring holistic and complex attention over time [10,34,35]. Recent studies have confirmed the need for practitioners to overcome habits and discomfort with change in order to facilitate the uptake of new practises [36] and the importance of empirically-derived frameworks for allied health professionals [37]. We propose a further difficulty stemming from the difficulties allied health practitioners have in reaching consensus in defining wellness.…”

A Service Delivery Model for Children with DCD Based on Principles of Best Practice

“…Partnership with parents' associations to influence the development of new programs and services for children with DCD is rarely discussed in the literature. The importance of working with children and their families is described in great detail (Forsyth et al, 2008;Sugden, 2007) but it is usually in the context of providing service to individual clients. Parent involvement in the development of services could be very beneficial and could lead to more evidence-based services that target participation and prevention of secondary consequences, which are reported to be the real concerns of families (Missiuna et al, 2007) and should be the goal of services for children with DCD (Camden et al, 2014;Missiuna et al, 2014).…”

“…14 DCD programs should include pathways and coordination mechanisms to clarify stakeholders' role across the health and the education systems (Forsyth et al, 2008;Missiuna et al, 2006;Rodger and Mandich, 2005). Many pathways described in the literature begin with the identification of concerns about children with DCD by teachers (Campbell and Skarakis-Doyle, 2007;Missiuna et al, 2012a;Salmon et al, 2006).…”

“…Frameworks and guidelines have been proposed by Forsyth et al (2008) and Blank et al (2012) that integrate many best practice principles and could apply in community-based rehabilitation centers. However, to our knowledge, there are no published examples of community-based service delivery models based on best practice principles in DCD.…”

Challenges in Implementing Wellness Approaches in Childhood Disability Services: Views from the field

“…Instead, these therapists need to be appropriately trained and supported to work in functional inter-professional teams, with the appropriate time and resources to implement the changes effectively, and encouraged to focus on their own self-care; these factors must be supported by the organisation's policies, management, funding imperatives, and empirical data (e.g., Grol & Grimshaw, 2003;Grol & Wensing, 2004). A recent study confirmed the importance of empirically-supported frameworks and procedures as key components of allied health professional practice; the authors examined the literature, surveyed over 600 allied health professionals, and conducted Childhood disability 23 focus groups with 71 service users to develop a comprehensive practice framework for working with children with Developmental Coordination Disorder and their families (Forsyth, Maciver, Howden, Owen, & Shepherd, 2008).…”