Engaging children and adolescents with acquired brain injury and their families in goal setting: The family perspective.

This study explored the experiences of goal setting in paediatric rehabilitation from the perspectives of children and adolescents with acquired brain injury (ABI) and their parents in paediatric rehabilitation. Using a qualitative research design, 15 semi-structured interviews were conducted with 13 parents and 8 young people with ABI aged between 9 and 18 years who were engaged in outpatient rehabilitation. Interview transcripts were analysed using constructivist grounded theory methods. Two main themes and several sub-themes emerged: Experiences of goal setting: The role of professionals; The role of the young person; and The role of the parents. Working as a team: Understanding each other and building trust; Communicating, sharing knowledge and different perspectives; and Being flexible. These themes reflect parent's and young people's experience of goal setting during paediatric rehabilitation for ABI and suggest clinicians play an important role in educating young people and their families about goal setting in the outpatient rehabilitation context. Young people and their parents also perceive the focus of outpatient rehabilitation as working collaboratively with clinicians to gain knowledge to manage the consequences of ABI. Our findings emphasize the importance of the therapeutic consumer-clinician relationship and the need to actively engage young people in goal setting.

Verbal memory in children with temporal lobe epilepsy: Exploring task-specificity.

RATIONALE: This study explored the applicability of the adult model of task-specificity of memory to children with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE). METHOD: Retrospective clinical audit; 38 children and adolescents (6-16 years) with lesional TLE (n = 22 mesial; n = 16 lateral) treated at tertiary pediatric hospitals completed two types of verbal memory paradigms: arbitrary associative (Verbal Paired Associates - Hard Pairs) and semantically related (Verbal Paired Associates - Easy Pairs; Stories). RESULTS: Children with mesial TLE performed more poorly than their lateral TLE counterparts on both types of memory paradigms: arbitrary associative and semantically related (Stories only). Groups with left and right TLE performed comparably on all verbal memory measures. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that the adult model of task-specificity may not be completely applicable to children with TLE. Consideration of the developmental context is critical in research and clinical work with pediatric populations.