Synopsis of resource
This material focuses on the past experiences of care for childhood developmental disabilities and ways of improvement for the future:
- WHAT has been our ‘culture of disability’?
- WHO are ‘we’, and why does that matter?
- WHERE are we/where should we be going?
- HOW can we change/expand our service systems?
- WHY is change essential? and
- HOW WILL WE KNOW if we succeed?
The practice with professionals trained/experienced to work with children (+/- youth) stops at age 18 and the professional usually lack experience of ‘adult’ needs/services. The author proposes that it’s essential to widen the scope of our thinking in line with WHO’s (ICF) framework for health and the F-words. It is also essential to take a life-course approach to these life-long ‘child-onset’ conditions. We need to promote: development, child/family strengths, achievement, being family-centered, life course thinking, and multiplicity of factors & forces that could influence everyone’s life.
Key learning outcome
- Families should be our focus of work
- Promote life course approach
- Identifying Societal determinants and expand our way of thinking to involve the whole community, policy makers and services of all sort to take a life course approach
Authors
Peter Rosenbaum, M.D., FRCP (C) Professor of Pediatrics since 1984, and held a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair 2001- 2014. In 1989, Peter co-founded the award-winning CanChild Centre for Childhood Disability Research. He and CanChild have received numerous award for their work from around the world.
Peter has held > 85 research grants and contributed to > 350 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters. He has been an invited lecturer and keynote speaker in >30 countries, has worked with almost 80 graduate students, and has been a graduate supervisor or committee member at several universities.
