The British Academy of Childhood Disability 2009 – something for everyone

Abstract

The British Academy of Childhood Disability (BACD) holds its Annual Scientific Meeting this month. This meeting has become a regular event in the calendars of child development centre teams nationally. I believe the multidisciplinary focus of this conference makes it unique in the United Kingdom, where paediatricians, paediatric therapists, speech and language therapists, occupational and physiotherapists meet together with teachers, other educational colleagues, paediatric nurses, psychologists, and members of voluntary organisations. This is familiar to our American and European colleagues who have similar organisations. This year will be the first year that we will be hosting a poster session and, thanks to this journal, we are able to offer a prize for the most outstanding entry. This development reflects the growing shared relationship between the BACD and DMCN, which we hope will continue to flourish and be mutually beneficial, to our shared goal of improving care to the children and young people we serve. The BACD, in particular, wants to enhance shared learning opportunities with all the teams engaged in delivering care to children and young people with a disability. Shared learning and shared evaluation of practice will in turn lead to improved evidence-based practice. Our conference programme this year titled ‘Interventions in neurodisability – what works?’, reflects this aim. We are looking forward to a rich set of presentations discussing treatments for sensory disorders, motor disability, and autism from leading experts in these fields. What has the BACD achieved since our conference last year? We have continued to work towards achieving our aims to ‘make a difference’ at a primary, secondary, and tertiary level, both locally, nationally, and outside the UK. At the primary level we are proud to have a parent representative on our committee who keeps our feet on the ground and reminds us of the fact that the main carers for our patients are indeed the carers within the home. We also are proud of our Newsletters, which we know have an ever-increasing circulation. We hope they will also be of interest to the non-UK readers of this journal. At the secondary level we have a close relationship with the British Association of Community Child Health (BACCH). In the UK, children and young people with a disability may have their main paediatric care delivered locally by a paediatrician based in the community (community paediatrician), a general paediatrician in a hospital, a paediatric neurodisability specialist in a child development centre or hospital, or a paediatric neurologist. Our membership reflects this spectrum. Many other countries do not have community paediatricians. One of the roles of these paediatricians is to manage the needs of children and young people who have a chronic illness and translate their problems to the education teams so that they can be successfully included in school. Also, these paediatricians are often the first who are asked to see the late walking or talking child, and so have to be skilled in neurodevelopmental delay and disorder. This points to the need for the BACD to maintain joint learning with tertiary paediatric specialists both medical and therapeutic. We are keen to keep up to date with paediatric therapists’ training and academic development – facilitated by the therapy representation we have on our Executive Committee. However, lack of funding for therapists to be involved in multidisciplinary professional development opportunities is an ongoing problem. To try to alleviate this difficulty we have developed a network of regional paediatric and therapy representatives who are active in planning regular local training opportunities. Outside the UK we are proud of our relationship with the European Academy of Childhood Disability that allows us to link with our European colleagues. Lastly, I am keen to draw attention (for those who work in the UK) to the National Framework for Children’s Continuing Care1 which is about to be published. This is relevant to acute paediatric neurologists as well. This publication could aid families and carers in receiving appropriate support in a more timely fashion. In a future journal it may be interesting to hear from other countries about models of planning care for children and young people who have complex health needs. For those in the UK, and even those working in childhood disability outside the UK, I encourage you to attend this year’s BACD conference, which promises to have something for everyone.