Family-centred care in family-specific teams

Abstract

Objective: To evaluate the perceptions and views of parents and rehabilitation and special education professionals on the family-centredness of care delivered and received. Design: Descriptive study with comparison of ratings in family-specific teams. Setting: Five paediatric facilities in the Netherlands. Subjects: Parents of children with cerebral palsy and professionals providing their children's rehabilitation and educational services. Main measures: The Dutch Measure of Processes of Care for families (MPOC-NL) and the Measure of Processes of Care for service providers (MPOC-SP). Data were collected and analysed per family. Results: In total 38 MPOC-NLs and 204 MPOC-SPs were returned. The family-specific team analysis of importance ratings yielded significant differences ( P < 0.05) on all domains between parents, rehabilitation professionals and special education professionals. For Enabling and partnership ( P < 0.01) and Specific information about the child ( P < 0.01), parents considered the behaviours to be significantly more important than rehabilitation professionals. The problem-score analyses showed that in all domains a considerable number of parents (19—38%) did not receive the care they deemed important. Conclusion: Family-specific analyses of MPOC importance ratings revealed differences in attitudes towards importance of specific care behaviours of team members, which subsequently may have caused the relatively high incidence of parents not receiving the care they deemed important. This underscores the need to explore and attune opinions on what constitutes proper service delivery.