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M. Alghamdi1, R. Alhazmi1, M. Abdul Karim1
1Umm Al-Qura University, Physical Therapy, Makkah, Saudi Arabia
Background: Despite the critical role of rehabilitation services in childhood disabilities, there are no studies describing the nature of rehabilitation services provided to children with disabilities in Saudi Arabia.
Purpose: To describe the amount, focus, and extent of family-centeredness of rehabilitation services for children with developmental disabilities in Saudi Arabia. To explore the relationship between child, family, service factors and the extent to which rehabilitation services met children’s needs.
Methods: Caregivers of children with developmental disabilities from Saudi Arabia completed a demographic information and a modified Arabic version of the Services Questionnaire about physical, occupational, and speech therapy received in the last 6 months. Descriptive statistics were used to report demographic information and services characteristics. Kendall's tau-b correlation was used to examine the association between child, family, service factors and the extent to which rehabilitation services met children’s needs.
Results: 191 children with developmental disabilities and their caregivers participated in the study. Children aged 10 months – 18 years and 62% were males. Types of disabilities were intellectual (42%), physical (30%), combined physical and intellectual (18%), and hearing, visual or speech (9%). Majority of caregivers were mothers (85%), and 43% resided western region. The number of sessions/week varied between 1 to 10 with an average of 2/week for physical, occupational, and speech therapy. Most frequent session duration was “less than 30 minutes to 1 hour” which represented 93%, 92%, and 90% for occupational, physical and speech therapy, respectively. On average, the focus of rehabilitation services was of a “small extent” on body structure/functions, activity and participation, and contextual factors. For the family-centeredness of rehabilitation services, provision of therapy outside clinical contexts, coordination of care among team members, and provision of information and resources were not provided at all for 62%, 51%, and 43% of caregivers, respectively. Among all child and family factors, child’s severity of disability was weakly negatively associated with extent of services meeting children’s needs for motor abilities (τb = -0.2, p =0.014), and self-care (τb = -0.15, p =0.041). Similarly, child’s level of education was weakly negatively associated with extent of services meeting children’s needs for motor abilities, self-care, participation and overall child wellbeing (τb = -0.16 to 0.18, p <0.01). For service-related factors, there was a weak positive association between session duration and extent of services meeting children’s needs for motor abilities, self-care, participation and overall child wellbeing (τb = 0.2 to 0.33, p <0.01). Additionally, there was a weak to moderate positive association between focus and family-centeredness of service and extent of meeting children’s needs for motor abilities, self-care, participation and overall child wellbeing (τb = 0.31 to 0.52, p <0.001).
Conclusion(s): The findings suggest that focus and family-centeredness are important aspects of rehabilitation services that can contribute to meeting children’s needs. The heterogeneity of developmental disabilities of children in our study may have contributed to the variability of the results.
Implications: Rehabilitation providers are encouraged to consider child, family and service factors when planning and delivering therapy for children with developmental disabilities.
Funding, acknowledgements: We acknowledge children and their families who participated in this study. No funding was provided to support this study.
Keywords: Rehabilitation Services, Developmental disabilities, Saudi Arabia
Topic: Paediatrics
Did this work require ethics approval? No
Institution: Umm Al-Qura University
Committee: Research Ethics Committee - Faculty of Applied Medical Sciences
Reason: Survey research; exempted from ethical review since personal identification information was not collected
All authors, affiliations and abstracts have been published as submitted.
