Needs, problems and rehabilitation goals of young children with cerebral palsy as formulated in the rehabilitation activities profile for children

To describe the content of needs, problems and goals of 41 Dutch children with cerebral palsy using the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health for Children and Youth (ICF-CY) as a classification system. To evaluate the adherence of formulations of needs, problems and goals to specifications of the Rehabilitation Activities Profile for Children. Raw text data were extracted and organized. Two raters independently weighed the entries' quality against the specifications and linked the extracted content to ICF-CY categories. In 12% of the reports no needs, and in 24% no principal goals, were formulated. Needs mostly pertained to the activities-and-participation domain (65%), whereas problems and goals covered all 3 ICF-CY domains. None of the needs were prioritized and 79% met the quality criterion of description of a problem/desire. Twenty-four percent of the problems were described in the activity-and-participation domain and 83% referred to a treatable problem. Fifty-six percent of the goals were formulated in terms of intended result/effect and 63% as child/parent actions. Insight is provided into the content of rehabilitation programmes for children with cerebral palsy. To optimize the quality of the reports, research on reasons for non-adherence to specifications of the Rehabilitation Activities Profile is needed.