Comprehensive Intervention for Children with Developmental Delays

This manual describes an early intervention program for children with communication disorders such as specific language impairment, developmental verbal dyspraxia, pervasive developmental disorder, and autism spectrum disorder and should be used in conjunction with the 9 intervention manuals comprising the complete program.

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"Comprehensive Intervention for Children with Developmental Delays: Program Manual and Checklists" describes an early intervention program for children with communication disorders such as specific language impairment, developmental verbal dyspraxia, pervasive developmental disorder, and autism spectrum disorder. The program provides multidisciplinary intervention to children, in the age range of 0-6 years, with the goal of integrating them into regular school by the school entry age of 6 years. This manual describes this process, the underlying rationale and what the program is all about.The complete program is contained in nine additional intervention manuals for toddlers and preschoolers that target skill building in children across the domains of motor skills (gross, fine and activities of daily living), communication (receptive and expressive language as well as Alternate and Augmentative Communication) and cognitive, social and emotional development. Lesson plans for each skill are described with clear targets, materials required and simple instructions along with illustrations.Also included in this manual are developmental checklists for assessing a child's proficiency of the target skills prior to intervention.
A review of the checklists was carried out by experienced clinicians and the resultant checklists and the format for the composite profile are given. The checklists were administered to children with communication disorders of the types that the program specifically caters to and sample profiles of some of these children are provided.Ideally the checklists should be administered to the primary caregiver of the child and their observation on each of the items recorded. The profile provides a representation of the child's mastery of skills across domains at the time of profiling. This simple user friendly profile is intended to provide a baseline for intervention that enables planning of subsequent targets in intervention towards enabling the child to perform at levels that are more appropriate for his or her chronological age.