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Parental Concerns, Developmental Temperature Taking, and the Necessary Conditions for Developmental Surveillance and Screening

  • Screening (J Cairney, Section Editor)
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Abstract

The early years are a critical period that can impact development across the life course in both negative and positive ways. Identification of children who have or may be at risk for delay is an area fraught with challenges related to how and when to do surveillance and screening, what tools to use, as well as the necessary conditions for assessments. We propose that efforts to identify children with developmental problems use a system of developmental surveillance that focuses on measuring parental concerns as developmental temperature taking along with contextual risk factors. Furthermore, we propose to move to a process of developmental surveillance that incorporates the 4M’s: many eyes, many times, many measures, and many situations, concepts that address the inherent limitations of traditional screening.

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Acknowledgments

The project upon which this review was based was funded by the Ministry of Child and Youth Services, Ontario, Canada.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Family Medicine, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada

    John Cairney, Heather J. Clark & Kalpana Nair

  2. Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

    John Cairney

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  1. John Cairney
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  2. Heather J. Clark
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Correspondence to John Cairney.

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John Cairney, Heather J. Clark, and Kalpana Nair declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

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This article is part of the Topical Collection on Screening

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Cairney, J., Clark, H.J. & Nair, K. Parental Concerns, Developmental Temperature Taking, and the Necessary Conditions for Developmental Surveillance and Screening. Curr Dev Disord Rep 3, 174–179 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40474-016-0095-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40474-016-0095-5

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