This text covers medical and social aspects of special needs and provides an indispensable guide to good working practice in the day-care and school setting.

Children with disabilities and complex medical and educational needs present a special challenge for policy makers and practitioners. These children exhibit tremendous heterogeneity in their conditions and needs, requiring a varied array of services to meet those needs. Uneven public and professional awareness of their conditions and a research base marked by significant gaps have led to programs, practices, and policies that are inconsistent in quality and coverage. Parents often have to navigate and coordinate, largely on their own, a variety of social, medical, and educational support services, adding to the already daunting financial, logistical, and emotional challenges of raising children with special needs. The unmet needs of children with disabilities and complex medical and educational needs can cause great suffering for these children and for those who love and care for them. To examine how systems can be configured to meet the needs of children and families as they struggle with disabilities and complex health and educational needs, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine held a workshop in December 2015. The goal of the workshop was to highlight the main barriers and promising solutions for improving care and outcome of children with complex medical and educational needs. Workshop participants examined prevention, care, service coordination, and other topics relevant to children with disabilities and complex health and educational needs, along with their families and caregivers. More broadly, the workshop seeks actionable understanding on key research questions for enhancing the evidence base; promoting and sustaining the quality, accessibility, and use of relevant programs and services; and informing relevant policy development and implementation. By engaging in dialogue to connect the prevention, treatment, and implementation sciences with settings where children are seen and cared for, the forum seeks to improve the lives of children by improving the systems that affect those children and their families. This publications summarizes the presentations and discussions from the workshop.

This text covers medical and social aspects of special needs and provides an indispensable guide to good working practice in the day-care and school setting.

This concise manual offers best practice guidance on dental treatment of pediatric patients with special health care needs (CSHCN). The straightforward approaches described will enable clinicians to deliver high-quality, patient-centered care to children with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Readers will find up-to-date information on case-based treatment planning, alternative caries management strategies, the use of behavioral and pharmacological interventions to facilitate delivery of quality treatment, and a team approach to care. Practical clinical tips are provided on how to achieve and maintain oral health, including good oral hygiene and nutrition. A systematic framework for patient assessment and interaction with medical colleagues will assist readers in understanding when dental protocols must be altered. Other important topics include techniques for effective communication with CSHCN, behavioral strategies to improve treatment acceptance, the role of occupational therapy techniques, the sensory adapted dental environment, and the use protective stabilization.

Children with neurodevelopmental disabilities such as mental retardation or autism present multiple challenges to their families, health care providers, and teachers. Professionals consulted by desperate parents often see the problems from their own angle only and diagnosis and intervention efforts wind up fragmented and ineffective. This book presents a model multidisciplinary approach to care--family-centered and collaborative--that has proven effective in practice. A pillar of the approach is recognition of the importance of performing culturally competent assessment and adjusting service delivery so that is responsive to cultural differences. Detailed case stories illuminate the ways in which the approach can help children with different backgrounds and different disabilities. Most chapters include study questions, lists of resources, and glossaries to facilitate easy comprehension by professionals with different backgrounds--in special education, communication sciences, and disorders, clinical and counseling psychology, neuropsychology and psychiatry, social work, pediatrics--and program administrators as well as students, trainees and educated parents. Caring for Children With Neurodevelopmental Disabilities and Their Families constitutes a crucial new resource for all those professionally and personally concerned with these children.

Over 2 Million Positive Discipline Books Sold! A Positive Approach To Helping Children With Special Needs Realize Their Potential Every child deserves to lead a happy and fulfilling life. For parents and teachers of children with special needs, helping their child to not only negotiate daily challenges, but to live fulfilling, meaningful lives, can be the most difficult challenge they will face. Over the years, millions of parents and teachers have come to trust Jane Nelsen’s classic Positive Discipline series for its consistent, commonsense approach to childrearing. Now, the bestselling series addresses the specific challenges that parents and teachers of children with special needs face, and offers them straightforward advice for supporting them in positive ways. In these pages are practical solutions to challenges such as: Learning to look beyond diagnostic labels ● Believing in each child's potential regardless of his/her stage of development ● Helping children integrate socially and interact with their peers ● Coping with the frustration that inevitably occurs when a child is being difficult ● Strengthening a child’s sense of belonging and significance ● And Many More! Use this book to answer such questions as: • How do you accommodate a disability, while still teaching a child to try their best? • How do you help a child cope with anger they may have trouble expressing, especially when that anger may on some level be justified? • How do you teach a child who may struggle with seemingly straight forward tasks to contribute to the world around them in a way that will be meaningful to them? “If you are raising or teaching a child with special needs, this book is a must-read. As the mother of a child with autism, my hopes and dreams for my son were no different than those of other parents. I wanted a parenting approach that helped my child grow up to be self confident, happy, and prepared for success in relationships, work, and life. I also needed practical, effective methods for addressing the significant, challenging behaviors I faced on a daily basis. Finally, in this amazing book, I found both….Thank you, thank you, thank you to the authors of this groundbreaking book.” - Rachel Fink Parks, MS, PCC

Caring for Children with Special Healthcare Needs and Their Families: A Handbook for Healthcare Professionals provides a guide for addressing the challenges of providing optimal general and routine care for the special needs population. More than just caring for the patients, the text stresses the importance of caring for their families as well. The book begins with chapters on common aspects of this population, including physical or sensory disabilities and developmental and learning disabilities. Subsequent chapters expound on more specific topics related to communication, mobility, emotional issues, quality of life, and end-of-life. Caring for Children with Special Healthcare Needs and Their Families is a must-have book for family and pediatric nurse practitioners, registered nurses, healthcare technicians, physician assistants and social services professionals who see these patients regularly as part of their daily patient load.

Children with chronic conditions, developmental disorders, and birth defects represent a sizeable minority of American children—as many as one in five. Often their families have financial or other issues limiting their access to appropriate care, thus limiting their adult prospects as well. Compounding the problem, many valuable resources concerning this population are difficult to access although they may be critical to the researchers, practitioners, and policymakers creating standards for quality care and services. In response, the Handbook of Children with Special Health Care Needs assembles research, applied, and policy perspectives reflecting the range of children’s problems requiring special services. Widely studied conditions (e.g., communication disorders, substance abuse) and those receiving lesser attention (e.g., tuberculosis) are covered, as are emerging ideas such as the “medical home” concept of continuity of care. Its interdisciplinary outlook makes the Handbook of Children with Special Health Care Needs a vital, forward-looking text for developmental psychologists, pediatricians, early childhood and special education researchers and practitioners, disability researchers, policymakers, and advocates, and providers for children with special health care needs.

This easy-to-use guide gives you a quick overview on many topics related to working with young children with special needs. Learn about inclusion in early childhood programs and disability law, as well as typical vs. atypical development. The quick guide also covers several specific disabilities/special needs and provides definitions, common characteristics, and practical strategies for adaptation. Cindy Croft is the director of the Center for Inclusive Child Care at Concordia University and on faculty for several university education programs. She has her MA in Education and has worked in the field of early childhood for over twenty years.