Meeting the Challenge of Severe Feeding Disorders

Working with infants and young children with evolving or severe cerebral palsy, against a background of lack of evidence regarding the effectiveness of intervention programmes, presents a considerable challenge to health professionals. When facilities are limited and under-resourced, the children present with persistent feeding difficulties and other multiple disabilities, and their families are from disadvantaged backgrounds, the challenges may seem insurmountable. Faced with these challenges, the author set out to trim a feeding intervention programme for very young dependent feeders, based on the Neurodevelopmental Therapy approach, to its absolute essentials. In the light of positive feedback from mothers and carers, and increasing pressure to promote the programme more widely, she decided to go one step further and evaluate the clinical effectiveness more rigorously. This book describes the resultant study, the Scale of Feeding Competence in Cerebral Palsy developed by the author, and the positive functional outcomes of the research.