Success or Failure? Are We Meeting the Needs of Children With Developmental Coordination Disorder?
Erin S Klein, Melissa Licari, Skye Barbic and 1 others
PMID 37670671WHAT IT FOUND
Parents of children with DCD in British Columbia report the current system is failing them.
Only two in five children receive therapy, and school-based support is rare. Families face high out-of-pocket costs and long waits, while emotional and social struggles are widespread and largely unaddressed.
Key findings
01Only 40% of children were currently attending therapy services, and just 20% had received therapy at school.
02Despite 89% of parents being concerned about social and emotional impacts, only 50% had accessed services for these issues, and nearly half reported those therapies were unsuccessful.
03Most families pay privately for therapy, with a median monthly cost of $240, and funding is often tied to a co-occurring autism diagnosis rather than DCD itself.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTsWhat it means for OTsWhat it means for SLPs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The sample was skewed towards high socio-economic status, urban areas, and English-speaking families, limiting generalizability to rural, low-income, or non-English speaking populations. The study relied on self-reported data from parents, which may be subject to recall bias or volunteer bias. Children with 'suspected' DCD were included, which may introduce diagnostic variability. The survey was conducted during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, which may have influenced access to services and parental stress levels. Only 237 of 336 questionnaires were included in the final analysis, and the response rate could not be calculated due to snowball sampling.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflicts of interest. Funding was provided by the University of British Columbia Faculty of Medicine, BC Children's Hospital Research Institute, Canadian Institutes of Health Research, and the Canada Research Chairs Program.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume these findings represent all families with DCD. The sample was predominantly urban, high-income, and English-speaking, which likely underestimates the barriers faced by rural, low-income, and non-English speaking families.