A preliminary report for the touring base model evaluation of the children with developmental delay in Kinmen

Abstract

Background: The purpose of this study was to analyze the characteristics of the children with developmental delays (DDs) in Kinmen. The methods of evaluation for the children with DDs were also discussed as references for other rural areas in Taiwan. Materials and Methods: There were 73 children recruited into our study in 2003 while starting the project of early evaluation for children with DDs in Kinmen. All the children were classified into 6 functional delay groups: Cognitive, speech, motor, social/emotional, pervasive, and nonspecific DDs. Results: Speech DD (46.7%) was the most frequently seen in all types of DDs. The second was the motor DD type (34.7%). Both the cognitive and pervasive types were the third frequent types of DDs (25.3%). It was shown that the speech DD types were the most frequently seen both in Taiwan and Kinmen, but the motor DD type was more frequent in Kinmen than in Taiwan. Conclusions: Our findings suggested that there are various factors related to the types of DDs. This result of our study could provide the future directions of the early evaluation program for the children with DD in rural areas.

Keywords

• Developmental delay
• touring base model
• children