Occupational therapy practice with children who have complex needs: Birth to five years
Creators: name: Hammilll, Kathrine
name: Dr Rosalind Bye
name: Strassmeir, Libby
name: Verbeek, Marjan
name: Coxon, Kristy
name: Mills, Caroline
Publisher: name: OSF Registries
Year: 2023
Subjects: subject: Occupational Therapy
subject: Medicine and Health Sciences
subject: Rehabilitation and Therapy
subject: Birth to Five Years
subject: Children
subject: Complex Needs
subject: Occupational Therapy
subject: Scoping Review

description: This scoping review aims to describe existing and emerging evidence about occupational therapy practice with children from birth to five years of age who have complex needs. Occupational therapists have a crucial role in helping children with complex needs participate in valued and meaningful occupations (Joosten, 2015), and supporting these children’s families to manage the demands of daily life. This role is not fully understood as a specific area of practice, and instead is often combined with other areas of occupational therapy practice where children’s needs are less complex. Early childhood occupational therapy with children with complex needs and their families is critical to maximise their development, wellbeing, and participation. Early childhood is classified as typically occurring during the zero-to-five-year age period (Clark &amp; Kingsley, 2020), and these children require significant occupational therapy input during this time. Yet to date, little is known about this area of occupational therapy practice in Australia, nor the occupational therapy workforce providing these services. Even the number of occupational therapists providing early childhood intervention to children with complex needs is not known (Department of Health, 2019). While working with children is a popular area of practice for occupational therapists, there has been limited exploration of the nature, scope, and aims of occupational therapy practice with children requiring complex early childhood intervention. The research will apply scoping review methodology to scope current knowledge and understandings, while best describing all available evidence on early childhood occupational therapy with children aged birth to five years who have complex needs. The review will map the evidence to provide an opportunity to clarify concepts, characteristics, definitions, and knowledge gaps (Munn et al., 2018). By enabling a descriptive synthesis, the results of the scoping review will highlight knowledge gaps and guide future research. This scoping review will follow the Joanna Briggs Institute scoping review methodology (Joanna Briggs Institute, 2020; Khalil et al., 2021; Munn et al., 2018; Pollock et al., 2021). Results will be reported in line with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) (Munn et al., 2018). This scoping review will provide an opportunity to evaluate evidence that is emerging, such as in the case of occupational therapy practice with children with complex needs (Munn et al., 2018). As a part of this scoping review, publicly available evidence will be included, such as peer-reviewed research, research dissertations, government policies/reports, scope of practice documents, books and book chapters, practice guidelines and public expert opinion (Pollock et al., 2021). Research publications may involve either/or a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methodologies. The scoping review will map the evidence and provide an opportunity to clarify concepts, characteristics, definitions, and knowledge gaps (Munn et al., 2018). By enabling a descriptive synthesis, the results of the scoping review will highlight knowledge gaps and guide future research.