Dear CanChild,

Welcome to the September 8th edition of CanChild Today! We are excited to share about the upcoming CP-NET conference, research round, research participation opportunities, recent news, a featured resource, and summaries of recent publications.

Do you have 5-10 minutes to spare? The CanChild website (www.canchild.ca) will be undergoing a re-design this fall. We are seeking your feedback so that we can improve our website to better meet your needs. This quality improvement survey is completely anonymous and will greatly help our website design team. Fill out the survey here.

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Our past issues are archived on the CanChild website and can be accessed here.

Discover, connect, and celebrate with families, researchers, healthcare providers, and policymakers on World Cerebral Palsy Day. Don’t miss this opportunity to learn about the latest Cerebral Palsy research and community resources!

The Measure of Processes of Care (MPOC) is a survey of parents’ perceptions assessing the extent of how they feel health services they and their child(ren) receive are family-centred. Consider joining us to see what we have learned so far. All are welcome, be it families or clinicians.

• Do you have a child or adolescent with Cerebral Palsy between 2 to 18 years old? Would you like to participate in a measurement study to test a new instrument called Gross Motor Function Family Report? If you are interested or have any questions, please email chagasp@mcmaster.ca.

The CanChild Research Award recipients for Year 2 Speech Language Pathology students were Jacob Lawrence and Rachel Watson. This award was established by CanChild to encourage exploration of important issues in childhood disability. The award is granted to the student team who has demonstrated outstanding leadership and research excellence in an evidence-based practice project focused on child or youth disability. Congratulations Jacob and Rachel!

The McMaster Handwriting Assessment Protocol (3rd Edition) provides a structured framework for assessing the handwriting of school-aged children in kindergarten to Grade 6. This protocol was designed to identify the specific areas in which a child is having difficulty with handwriting and to help occupational therapists determine whether and where to intervene. 

Research on Children With Cerebral Palsy in Low- and Middle-Income Countries

The purpose of this special communication is to present ideas and thoughts from a symposium at the 75th Annual Meeting of the American Academy for Cerebral Palsy and Developmental Medicine. These included perspectives and lessons from 3 previously published review studies regarding cerebral palsy (CP) research in Brazil, India, and African countries, which explored the literature through the lens of the World Health Organization's International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) framework. Using this common lens, first we present the main findings of each of these articles, as well as the similarities and differences in CP research across these low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Second, considering current evidence, lessons from other LMICs and based on our experiences, we raise recommendations of critical areas to be addressed such as ICF framework implementation and best evidence practice on CP, focusing on prevention, early diagnosis, and intervention

Authors: Leite, H. R., Jindal, P., Abdel Malek, S., & Rosenbaum, P. Pediatric Physical Therapy, 2022. doi: 10.1097/PEP.0000000000000949

Cultural Adaptation of Parent-Implemented Early Communication Interventions: A Scoping Review

Parent-implemented early communication interventions are commonly delivered to culturally and linguistically diverse families but little guidance exists for clinicians or families regarding what aspects of parent-implemented communication interventions to adapt. In this scoping review, we included 21 studies describing parent-implemented early communication interventions that had been culturally adapted. We described which intervention components were adapted using a framework. Two main findings were that 1) more clarity is required regarding how cultural adaptations are reported for communication interventions and that cultural adaptation frameworks may be useful, but difficult to use; and 2) language was most commonly adapted, however goals and values embedded in the interventions were rarely adapted. Click here for more information.

Authors: Albin, M., Micsinszki, S., Phoenix, M. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 2022. doi: 10.1044/2022_AJSLP-21-00286