Clinical Practice Guidelines: Redefining the Standards of Care for Infants, Children and Families with Special Needs

Increasing numbers of young children are presenting with non-progressive developmental disorders involving compromises in the capacity to relate, communicate, and think. These disorders involve many different areas of developmental functioning, ranging from planning motor actions and comprehending sounds to generating ideas and reflecting on feelings. New research and clinical observations are making it possible to more fully identify these functional developmental capacities and, thereby, characterize each child and family according to their unique profile. Most important, these new observations enable clinicians to individualize assessment and intervention approaches in response to the child- and family-specific question, "WHAT IS THE BEST APPROACH FOR A GIVEN CHILD AND FAMILY?"

Over the years, the disciplines that work with developmental disorders have constructed a large body of research and clinical experience on the functional developmental capacities that are impaired in disorders of relating, thinking and communicating. This knowledge, however, needed to be brought together and organized. In response to this need, The Interdisciplinary Council on Developmental and Learning Disorders (ICDL) launched an initiative to systematize current clinical knowledge, including both research and the clinical experience of disciplines such as speech pathology, developmental pediatrics, neurology, occupational and physical therapy, psychology, social work, special education, and child psychiatry. The result of this effort is the ICDL CLINICAL PRACTICE GUIDELINES.