AUTHOR=Rosenbaum Peter 

TITLE=Developmental Disability: Families and Functioning in Child and Adolescence

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Rehabilitation Sciences

VOLUME=Volume 2 - 2021

YEAR=2021

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/rehabilitation-sciences/articles/10.3389/fresc.2021.709984

DOI=10.3389/fresc.2021.709984

ISSN=2673-6861

ABSTRACT=The WHO’s ICF framework for health provides an integrated approach to health for everyone. Several aspects of this framework allow us to see people’s lives in a richer and more holistic manner than has traditionally been the case based on diagnosis alone. These features include the positive language (emphasizing in particular ‘activity’, ‘participation’, and ‘personal factors’); the interconnections of the parts of this ‘dynamic system’, in which every component can influence every other one; and the formal inclusion of ‘contextual factors’ – personal and environmental – that are otherwise too easy to take for granted and then ignore.
This paper addresses the ‘environmental’ dimension of the ICF framework – specifically referring to ‘family’ as the central environmental force in the lives of children and adolescents. The perspectives of the author are those of a ‘developmental paediatrician’, whose career has focused on children with conditions that challenge their development, and their families. Lessons learned from a lifetime of this work – including teaching and research as well as clinical services – are offered. Particular emphases will be on (i) the importance of focusing on the family in a nonjudgmental ‘family-centred’ way; (ii) how conceptual ideas about child (and family) development and parenting are as important as technical approaches to intervention; and (iii) how the ICF framework ‘allows’ – indeed encourages – such a focus to have value and importance equal to the best of biomedical interventions. Examples from current research will illustrate how these ideas can be implemented.