Influence of accessibility of services on Quality of Life of school children with Cerebral Palsy in Latvia

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Development of The Viking Speech Scale to Classify the Speech of Children with Cerebral Palsy

Surveillance registers monitor the prevalence of cerebral palsy and the severity of resulting impairments across time and place. The motor disorders of cerebral palsy can affect children’s speech production and limit their intelligibility. We describe the development of a scale to classify children’s speech performance for use in cerebral palsy surveillance registers, and its reliability across raters and across time. Speech and language therapists, other healthcare professionals and parents classified the speech of 139 children with cerebral palsy (85 boys, 54 girls; mean age 6.03 years, SD 1.09) from observation and previous knowledge of the children. Another group of health professionals rated children’s speech from information in their medical notes. With the exception of parents, raters reclassified children’s speech at least four weeks after their initial classification. Raters were asked to rate how easy the scale was to use and how well the scale described the child’s speech production using Likert scales. Inter-rater reliability was moderate to substantial (k > .58 for all comparisons). Test–retest reliability was substantial to almost perfect for all groups (k > .68). Over 74% of raters found the scale easy or very easy to use; 66% of parents and over 70% of health care professionals judged the scale to describe children’s speech well or very well. We conclude that the Viking Speech Scale is a reliable tool to describe the speech performance of children with cerebral palsy, which can be applied through direct observation of children or through case note review

DEVELOPMENTAL MEDICINE & CHILD NEUROLOGY Classification systems of communication for use in epidemiological surveillance of children with cerebral palsy PUBLICATION DATA AAC Augmentative and alternative communication BFMF Bimanual Fine Motor Function Clas

AIM Children with cerebral palsy (CP) often experience communication difficulties. We aimed to identify a classification system for communication of children with CP suitable for epidemiological surveillance. METHOD Systems to classify the communication of children with CP were identified. The Communication Function Classification System (CFCS), Functional Communication Classification System (FCCS), and Viking Speech Scale (VSS) were chosen for further investigation and translated. They were administered to 155 children aged 4 to 13 years with CP (across all motor severity levels) from eight European countries. Children's parents/carers, speech therapists, and other health professionals applied the systems through direct observation. Other professionals applied them from case notes only. The systems were assessed for agreement, stability, ease, and feasibility of application. RESULTS Test-retest stability was moderate-to-high for VSS (k=0.66-0.88), CFCS (k=uncomputed-0.91), and FCCS (k=0.52-0.91). Overall interrater agreement was fair to very good for every classification system. VSS achieved the best agreement between parents/ carers and speech therapists. VSS was considered the easiest instrument to apply. INTERPRETATION Because of its ease of use by a range of healthcare professionals, the VSS should be considered for CP registers which intend to survey speech intelligibility. For a wider assessment of communication, the CFCS or FCC should be considered. Cerebral palsy (CP) is a permanent but not unchanging disorder of movement, posture, and motor function, 1 'often accompanied by disturbances of sensation, cognition, communication, perception, and/or behaviour, and/or by a seizure disorder'. 2 Surveillance programmes monitor trends in CP prevalence and its determinants, and record the functional severity of associated impairments