Systematic Review of the prevalence of Developmental Vulnerability and factors associated with developmental vulnerability, and discussion of theoretical/analytical frameworks used in included studies. Sue Woolfenden, Valsa Eapen, Katrina Williams, Andrew Hayen, Nick Spencer, Lynn Kemp, BACKGROUND Developmental vulnerability refers to “susceptibility to negative developmental outcomes that can occur under high-risk conditions" 1 . One of the keys to future health, well-being and development is a solid foundation in early child development. Unfortunately we have evidence that many children have a sub-optimal start to life and are developmentally vulnerable, that is they are significantly under performing in one or more areas of child development (e.g., motor, language, self-help, socioemotional, cognitive, behavioural). At present data on the prevalence of developmental vulnerability, particularly in the preschool years is disparate, with variations in tools used and thus how it is defined, ages when it is measured and countries it is measured in. Key to measuring the prevalence of developmental vulnerability is to clearly define it. There are two ways to conceptualise developmental vulnerability. The first is from a developmental trajectory point of view where individual children are falling behind their peers eg children identified by developmental surveillance tools such as the Parental Evaluation of Developmental Status ( PEDS), 2 as being at high or moderate risk of developmental disability. It is important to identify these individual children as developmentally vulnerable as early as possible in the preschool years through developmental surveillance systems so that they can be referred to universal services that promote child development such as quality child care and appropriate targeted interventions which can include speech pathology or further global assessment. The second is a population based continuum where populations of children who are at the top end of the bell curve are doing well and those at the bottom are developmentally vulnerable for example a child is defined as developmentally vulnerable when in the bottom 10% of a population based child development indices such as the AEDI. 3, 4 This population level measure acts as a societal child health indicator for the population or subpopulations of interest. Both individual and population applied measures can be used to monitor developmental vulnerability in the preschool years in communities, and to investigate its patterning with regards to measures financial, human and social capital including provision of universal prevention and early intervention services in order to develop an effective service response. However the variability in applications means that we need to be clear regarding which tool and definition we are using to describe developmental vulnerability in order to understand differences in prevalence rates. In addition developmental vulnerability varies with age of the child as this reflects the temporal nature of development so we need to be clear in which age
Systematic Review of the prevalence of Developmental Vulnerability and factors associated with developmental vulnerability, and discussion of theoretical/analytical frameworks used
Jul 09, 2023
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