Needs, problems and rehabilitation goals of young children with cerebral palsy as formulated in the rehabilitation activities profile for children

Objective: To describe the content of needs, problems and goals of 41 Dutch children with cerebral palsy using the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health for Children and Youth (ICF-CY) as a classification system. To evaluate the adherence of formulations of needs, problems and goals to specifications of the Rehabilitation Activities Profile for Children.

Methods: Raw text data were extracted and organized. Two raters independently weighed the entries' quality against the specifications and linked the extracted content to ICF-CY categories.

Results: In 12% of the reports no needs, and in 24% no principal goals, were formulated. Needs mostly pertained to the activities-and-participation domain (65%), whereas problems and goals covered all 3 ICF-CY domains. None of the needs were prioritized and 79% met the quality criterion of description of a problem/desire. Twenty-four percent of the problems were described in the activity-and-participation domain and 83% referred to a treatable problem. Fifty-six percent of the goals were formulated in terms of intended result/effect and 63% as child/parent actions.

Conclusion: Insight is provided into the content of rehabilitation programmes for children with cerebral palsy. To optimize the quality of the reports, research on reasons for non-adherence to specifications of the Rehabilitation Activities Profile is needed.