Article

Italie - Enfant - psychiatrie
In the Piedmont region, as in the rest of Italy, school integration of
'handicapped students' in regular classes, independently of the pathologies they
are suffering from, involves almost the totality of students between the age of 3
and 14 and the majority of students between the age of 14 and 18. The responsibility to 'recognise the student as a handicapped person' is attributed
to the regional public health system (Child Neuro-Psychiatry Services - CNPS).
The information about the students is registered in the regional NPI.net, a
Web-based application. The question was if ICF could help to develop a monitoring
system about school inclusion processes better than the existing one. In fact,
because all information is based on medical diagnosis embedded in narrative
descriptions, it is often difficult to obtain reliable and comparable data on the
disability profiles and the quality of children and adolescents school
experience. METHODS: Six CNPS, covering 50% of the Piedmont region, started a
pilot study on disabled children at school. Diagnostic data of the children and a
brief description of their functioning profiles using ICF were considered.
Approximately 1000 school children and adolescents with disability were selected
for this study. RESULTS: We studied the extension and the severity of impairment
of body functions (BF) and/or of activity (A&P) restriction, and the extension
and the intensity of facilitators and barriers (EF) together with other factors
such as provenience (Local Health Authorities - LHA), main health condition and
age of the subjects. The analysis of variance, taking into account LHA, main
health condition and age, confirmed the statistical significance of these three
factors in differentiating the personal profiles in terms of BF, A&P and EF.
CONCLUSIONS: The study shows the feasibility and reliability of the use of
ICF-based functioning descriptions to monitor school inclusion processes and to
better investigate the differences between LHAs in diagnostic procedures, disease
prevalence and characteristics of facilitators and barriers.
As a direct
consequence of the study, the Regional Councils for Instruction, Health and
Social Politics have started a 3-year training programme for approximately 2500
school operators, 350 health operators in NPI services and 350 social operators.

Langue : ANGLAIS